(gentle music) (flames roar) (door clunks) - If you are visiting this
channel for the first time, my name is James, I am an artist based here in Scotland, and this is my artist blog. If you enjoy seeing
beautiful things being made, then smash that Subscribe button and click Download Notifications so that you never miss another video. (gentle music continues) Over the course of the last two videos you'll have seen me take
large sheets of glass, cut them in halves, and then cut them into circles to prepare glass for this sculpture that I'm going to build. On that note, I want to say a
massive thank you to everyone for all the incredible feedback. So, it's time for me to
stop with the talking and get on with building it. Now, in my previous video, you saw me shape these pieces of glass, cutting the arcs out. Now, before I can start
building with them, I have to clean them up
and rub the edges down. In order to do that, I
use this diamond pad. It's just got diamond
grit encrusted in it, and I just rub it along the edges. And that's all that it takes
to take off these sharp edges. If there's quite a large overhang, then sometimes I use the trusty old hammer just to chip that off. At the same time, I want
to clean any dust off so that when I go to build with them, they sit nice and tight together. (pad scrapes) (paper squeaks) It's quite amazing how easily that sharp edge is removed already, just after two or three passes across it with the diamond pad. I can run my finger around
there and it's not sharp at all. So I've taken off most of the sharp edges. And as I said, sometimes you do get a little
stubborn piece of glass that is quite sharp and just
needs to be knocked off. I'm not sure what a glazier or someone with a formal
training would do to remove that. But as you know, I've got no shortage of
hammers in the workshop. So I'm just gonna take a hammer
and gently chip that off. (hammer taps) And that's all that's
required to move that edge. Now I'll just take a diamond pad and just take the roughness off it again. (pad scrapes) Now that I've got all the
sharp edges rubbed down, it's time to start building. Now, with many of my larger sculptures, especially with the slate
sculptures that are so heavy, the logical place to start, and the only choice is
to start at the bottom. However, with this sculpture, I'm actually going to
start at the widest point and build the bottom
of the egg upside down. Once I've started that, and I'm happy that all the pieces of glass are the right shape, I'm gonna take the bits
again, fix it together, turn it over and then build
the remainder of the egg the right way up. That's the plan. Let's see how it actually works out. (gentle music continues) (door clunks) (gentle music continues) (pad scrapes) (hammer taps) (pad scrapes) (gentle music continues) (door clunks) (gentle music continues) So it's really important at this stage to make sure that I have
got all the glass shaped to the right size. So I'm trying to be really careful just to make sure that
I get this curve right, right from the beginning. So, when you see me
looking down like this, I'm trying to check that it
is coming almost straight up before it starts curving. (gentle music continues) (glass scrapes) There's a few pieces of glass
that I can't get to fit, so I'm just gonna go ahead and cut those. I'll speed this up. The previous video shows exactly
how I caught all the glass. So I'll put a link in the
description of this video, if you want to go and check it out. (compass scratches) (glass scrapes) (glass tool taps) (glass tool taps) (glass tool scrapes) (glass tool thuds) (glass tool scrapes) (glass tool taps) (glass clinks) (glass clinks) (gentle music continues) (door clunks) (gentle music continues) (glass clinks) (gentle music continues) (door clunks) Well, I finally finished
the bottom of the egg. It's taken much longer than I anticipated, rebuilt it and bonded it together. Now, I've flipped it over and I'm ready to continue building. This piece relies on
the sun to truly shine. When I'm finished the egg, the effect that I'm looking to achieve is for the sun to hit
the edge of the glass, then travel 'round inside the glass. And when it reaches the
end where it's broken here and the pieces are fit back together, the light should travel in
through the edge of the glass. These pieces should reflect
the light and look like little darts of light, traveling away through
the wall of the glass. As you then walk 'round the egg, the light appears to move and that really brings the piece to life. So let's crack on and build the top half. It's taken much longer than expected. We're only a few days away from Easter. And hopefully, I'll have
it finished on time. (gentle continues music) (glass clinks) (gentle music continues) (glass clinks) (glass clinks) (glass clinks) (pad scrapes) (gentle music continues) It's now Friday morning, and I'm feeling a bit more confident that it's gonna be finished
in time for Easter. I have been fighting a bit of a battle where there are sections
ought to obviously be round and concentric and just
coming in each time. However, they were getting
slightly away from being round and becoming a bit more oval. I've tried to gradually
get it back to being round. I can't suddenly change direction or the overall form of
the egg is gonna be lost. Right, I think that layer's
looking pretty good. So on with the next one. (gentle music continues) Things are really starting
to take shape now, but one of the most important things is to really finish the job off well, I always find when you're
making a sculpture, your eyes are always drawn
to the top and the bottom. Those are where the
lines start and finish. So that being the case, it's really important
that these pieces of glass are cut to just the right size. Another thing of course is that, because this sculpture
relies so much on light, it would be very easy just to
cut one circle out of glass and add that on and
that'll be the right size and the overall form of
the egg would be right. However, the way the light is reflected might be completely wrong. The likelihood is that if I cut it out of one piece of glass, apart from the fact that it's not gonna
reflect the light the same, because it's not broken, a large piece of glass like that is probably going to look much darker. So first of all, I'll cut it out and
then have a look at it. (compass scratches) (gentle music continues) (glass scrapes) (glass tool taps) (glass tool scratches) (glass tool taps) (glass clinks) I've got my circle cut out. I'll go ahead and add it to the sculpture and check to see how the light compares to the rest of the sculpture. So there's no discernible difference between this piece of glass and the rest of the sculpture. And I'm quite happy that it
doesn't even need broken. It looks really good. And the other thing is the egg shape, which has essentially been
sculpted from within this egg, is at a point where it's coming
to its natural conclusion. So, I'm quite happy just to cap it off with this piece of glass. So now that I'm wearing
the homeward stretch, I'll go and check the
last few pieces of glass, which can be really quite tricky just to get it finished just as I want it. And let's see how it turns out. (gentle music continues) Thank you all so much for watching. I really hope you enjoyed my video. If you did, please do me a huge favor and give it big thumbs up. Let me know what you
think in the comments. I hope you're well where you are and I'll look forward to
seeing you again soon.
