hey guys, recently, I got this tiny broken chunk of soapstone at a reclaimed art supply store,
and I've never actually worked with soapstone before. I've never seriously thought of playing
with soapstone before, and so this is just me kind of casually trying out this medium.
I don't really know anything about sculpture or soapstone itself. I'm not experienced with
working with it or caring for it. I'm really just playing with it. this was a discarded piece that
was very awkwardly shaped and I decided that I was going to try to dig a fish out of this thing,
and we just happened to have the set of metal files that I thought would be okay, and they were,
because soapstone is really just compressed talc. it's really just a hard clump of dust,
so cutting through it with these files is actually quite simple! I was actually really surprised at
how fast it was happening. I pretty much just drew in pencil the general shape of the thing
that I wanted and decided to file pieces away and hope for the best, pretty much. my first take on
this medium is how interesting it feels to do it. I wouldn't say that it was relaxing because there
is a little bit of patience required. less so with soapstone, but I'm definitely the type of person
who prefers the outcome over the process. but it felt different. it made me feel kind of grounded.
I wasn't listening to anything because I had to be outside. it's very much recommended to work
with soapstone outdoors because the dust itself is quite bad for you and you should be wearing
dust masks. I didn't do that, but you should, and it's incredibly messy. I was wearing house clothes
like pajamas and this apron that I never wear. I really like the powder that came off of it when
it piles up around your feet, and at the end of the session, it's like having all this moon dust,
but things were going fine. I had myself on a pretty short timeline, and so I decided to
pick up a rasp, which is a metal tool that's kind of like the tiniest part of your cheese
grater. I found that that took things off a lot faster, and so that is really what you should be
starting out with, I think. the metal files are meant to be more of a middle stage tool. now,
I'm not a very good planner, and so what I found out later is that I ended up not carving out
enough things. a fish is supposed to have fins on the side as well, and so I kind of missed them,
and was working more from imagination than from any kind of reference, so that's where I went
bad. it's been super hot here lately so the last little bit of detailing, I did inside on my desk
because it wasn't really that much left to do. I did give it one sanding session with fine grit
sandpaper. I can't tell you the number of it because it didn't say on the back of it. you're
also supposed to sand it wet. there are lots of ways to get your stone to be very shiny and
clear and beautiful. I think the only goal that I really had for this was to make it look the color
that it does when it's wet. I really just kind of wanted to use whatever I had around the house and
so I used a bit of this furniture oil, which isn't really recommended for this, but I used it anyway,
and a little bit of the the cold wax medium that I have. they say you can use a car wax. if this
doesn't work out, I'll probably try something like that also, but it's really the oil that makes it
look darker and wetter and I really love the color that the stone is, this really pale green color.
it's very pretty, and so I ended up with this cute little fish and he's still very soft and
very easily scratched, even with my fingernail. if I touched it, it would leave a little scratch, but
he's my little fish now and I'm probably gonna put him up with my other interesting stones. overall,
I kind of wished that I had bought more pieces because this is actually quite enjoyable! I'm
very happy that I gave it a chance and tried it out. so if you've been on the fence about
trying out this soap stone carving thing, I highly recommend you actually give it a shot,
especially if you come across random discarded pieces that nobody wants anymore, because then
it's totally worth it and you don't have to feel bad about messing up your fish's fins.