"I...found some clear plastic sheets that could be drawn on by felt-tipped pen. They were better than the usual semi-opaque paper when it came to tracing accurate lines from a blurry photograph" (p. 202). Here I'm transferring the tracing from the archive photograph onto the board for the bottom layer of carving, using carbon paper:
pp. 204-208. In carving inventing is part of making. Here's an example of a carving altering significantly in the course of its making, as it opportunistically veers away from the drawn design. This is the almost incomprehensible working drawing for a drop, composed in Adobe Illustrator. Each layer of carving is in a different color:
Notice the fern fronds on the right hand side of the lower grouping. They curl upwards to form a kind of whirlpool effect with the downward spiraling leaves to their left. Below is the carving on the workbench in mid course, with the ferns in the position dictated by the drawing though not yet attached to the still-incomplete lower layer:
But this whirlpool flow in the lower grouping began to trouble me. It seemed inconsistent with the design of the upper grouping. Usually the spontaneous opportunism in carving is focused on the smaller details of modelling, but sometimes, as here, it is possible to make profound alterations as you go along. Here, since the lower level was still in a fluid state of modeling, I was able to rotate the ferns 180 degrees:
which I think made the whole carving more consistent:
