11 Eyes

I don't always leave the eyes to last - and with 'eyes', I'm really talking about the iris. It's the iris with its little spot of light that makes the eye come alive. It's a scary time in the carving: if anything goes wrong then I'll need to re-carve the surrounding area extensively before I get a second chance.

On the other hand, I've been sneaking up on this moment for a while: I've got the eyeball sitting correctly in the head, and the eyelids symmetrical and looking right. So, good to go!

Did you know that in Greek mythology Iris was the personification of the rainbow and a messenger of the gods? There are different ways of carving the iris. A real iris has colour and reflects a little spot of light. In uncoloured wood or stone we can really only play with the spot of light. And the only way we can create the spot of light is to create shadows around it. And that means removing wood. Look at other sculptures (in stone as well as wood) to see how others have tackled this down the ages. Here, I've used the way Michelangelo carved the irises in his 'David' for my inspiration.