Chair of Torture

I was really excited to cut this image, although a bit nervous that I'd have to redo it a load of times like the thumbscrews. I was looking forward to trying to capture all of the textures. For this, I used a photograph that I'd taken myself while visiting the Kriminalmuseum in Rothenburg.

I thought that I'd captured the form of the Pear of Anguish pretty well, and by using shadows communicated the three dimensionality successfully. I wanted to do this again with this cut.

I was concerned for a while about how to describe the spikes as well as the shadows etc. But for the shadow of the band that goes across the chest, for example, I just left the area blank, and only cut anything around that.

I also experimented with a method of cutting to describe the texture of wood. By carving waving lines and leaving areas of lino to suggest texture and shadow, this worked successfully.