Enter stage left...the audience.

The audience is starting to appear. The lady centre foreground is going to be wrapped in a spotty blanket. She had acquired a glass of wine to keep her warm. Theatre dress is definitely skewed towards warm and weatherproof! Performances continue through wind and rain.(The audience also bring picnics, flasks, wine. I was offered a slice of home made sponge cake last time, by a lady sitting next to me! She had brought the whole cake in a tin! )

The plant right will go, to be replaced by a piece of stonework bearing some celtic carving; the theatre is full of it. Amazing that it was all done by Rowena Cade, in partly-set concrete! I will probably twine a little ivy or some such plant around the stone base to soften it. To the left the spears of Euphorbia will stay, their tiny round-ish flowers an echo of milady's blanket.

It's evolving......

The sketch is generally only a rough guide to follow and if I'm very lucky, I find the block evolves as I engrave it. Things get altered; a bit lighter here or a texture there and additions or deletions (before they're engraved, of course!).

I think the central stage area will be mostly white with small areas of light texturing (I shall take away some of the texturing I've already done as I like the bold silhouettes of the audience against the white.) I'm seriously considering removing the plant from the bottom right and replacing it with something else Minack-ish. Maybe a portion of the wonderful carved stonework they have there. Or a half-finished cup of cocoa on the grassy ledge perhaps!

It really is a fantastic place. It was created by one determined woman and her grumpy gardener. http://www.minack.com/ Below are a couple of photos I took when I went.

A panorama of the auditorium

 And just before the play opened. Note the moon over the distant cliffs. Magical!

Thinking time

I do find that engraving a block, given that each cut is irrevocable, lends itself to a certain amount of 'thinking time'. If one has the luxury of course and isn't harnessed to a deadline, in which case it's as best to have decided your approach early on so as not to incur any delay.

I had hoped to be further along with this block but was called away to do something else. But I propped it up so that I could see it and take my time in fixing in my head what was to remain black, what should have a hard edge, what textures, etc. I like to do that. I have enough 'hurry hurry hurry' in my 'day job' and to be able to relax a bit is liberating.

Anyway, I'm on the block again and this is this afternoon's work. More tomorrow......