Thankfully the weather stayed kind for consecutive days and I was able to crack on well with the Wilberfoss/”Wild Boar Foss” carving. The lettering on the scroll was first, and I decided on a Medieval-style font which seemed apt; with the scroll dropping down vertically rather than being horizontal as I’d originally planned, the spacing of the letters was a concern ~ having letters like “I” and “L” at the top gave an illusion that they were further apart, and the letters below appeared squashed, despite me having made a template for size. I experimented with staggering the “I” and the “L” and the “SS”, but it didn’t look right; the important thing is that it is easy to read ~ and it had to be as clear as possible due to the discolouration of the wood again, which makes certain letters harder to pick out.
The last thing was carving a representation of the River Foss; I toyed with the idea of using the shape of the Foss from an arial photograph or map, but felt it would be too abstract for a casual viewer. With the space for the river being underneath the boar, there was a risk too that I’d make it look like the animal was either hovering above water or about to jump in; the best course of action was to make the river quite stylized and take it across on an angle, and shape under the boar’s feet to create a kind of shelf.
