How I Carved A City From Stone

Today I want to make something special, so I'm gonna make this out of this. So the first thing I did, I found this sandstone in the canyons of central Kartli in Georgia. Now as I said, this is a sandstone and compared to granite or limestone, this is a pretty soft stone as a mineral. So to demonstrate, there's a small little chisel and as I push it into the stone, it pretty easily removes and smooths out any sort of surface level imperfections and therefore it shouldn't take too much time for me to chisel out a piece of art from this particular stone. Now before I begin, you might be thinking that I want to draw out a basic sketch of what I want to carve out. Wrong! I like to live dangerously! And off I go with lightly marking the general areas that I want to work on. I truly don't have a clear plan of attack or anything like that, but I have a general idea of what I want to create. So the first little archway has been carved out. It's a bit archaic, it's a bit rough, but it is a start of an entire ancient city that I'm planning to carve out of the stone. So let's get to it. And yes, you heard it correctly! Here I am roughly shaving away the material and revealing what seems to be an ancient city ruins that was carefully constructed from a solid rock. So there will be such details like narrow stone stairways leading from one level to the next, teeny tiny archways and windows of old habitats. And of course all of this is supervised by our dog Tuta. I can't get around it, it's just the way it has to be. It's also a good idea to have a vacuum cleaner nearby in order to suck up all the excess dust that is generated from the drill bit. As you can see we made a bit of progress here. I added the new layers and different kinds of niches where I can build out more rooms and chambers. But we have to go and kind of warm up a little bit because we're a little bit cold sitting here in the middle of October as you can tell. They can't tell. What do you say? Should we go and fire up a fire stove, David? I think indeed we should. Oh my! Wow! What do you say, partner? External fireplace, I guess. To form the foundation. So the carvings are coming along nicely. There's even sparks that occur from time to time. That's why it's a good idea to wear eye protection. And as the day goes by, slowly but surely, drill bit after drill bit, I get a clearer image of the overall city structure. All right, the overall shaping of the most prominent areas is done. Now I think I can move on to the refining process. We're all going to be carving out steps, more detailed archways, windows, and the columns. In fact, there will be areas we're all going to carve out these areas which seem architecturally supportive of the upper areas. And it's going to be an interesting, intuitive, improvisational process of discovery, in a sense, how these people used to live in this ancient city. And the overall design of the structure is actually very visibly inspired by a real-life place called Vardzia. It's located in the Sanskrit-Javakheti region of Georgia, and it is a literal city that is carved out of a stone. It's a very impressive site, and that's a very strong inspirational source for me to use this. I did another structure like this, similar to this design, but inspired by another place called Upliscihe. Here's the image of it. So let's get back to work. Oh yes, nothing better than a soft rotten wooden plank breaking over your head to wake you up to the creative process. Don't try this at home, kids. So as I go along, I'm refining the details more and more to a point where I start using pottery tools to sharpen the rounded column bases, which bothers me. Triangle-shaped, boy. With a little bit of epoxy on it. Accumulated amount of like dust. Now you might have noticed I've switched over to a smaller drill bit in order to start carving smaller portals and niches to further detail the city's architecture, while also switching over to these tools to sharpen the corners where the walls and the columns meet the floor. This is a very satisfying and meditative process for me, which you can tell by my expression. I'm focusing all of my attention in order to perfect my focus and attention to detail. So I took a bit of a break now, and it's always important to look at your work from afar, see how the process is going, all the lines are more or less parallel and whatnot, and it looks very nice. I like it. These openings, they kind of look like open mouths, and they kind of they speak to me. I can almost hear their voices going a little bit like, you know, someone, a neighbor walking through here, over here, and then over here. And then I want to open up the passages over on these sides, like through these. It's going to be a little bit tricky to do, but I think I have drill bits that are going to be capable of doing that. You see how it has like angles? I can attack the wall from inside with this sort of a corner, since this shape is kind of inverted, and open up like a narrow kind of a passage. Me leaving out thin slivers and areas of the natural rock face make it seem like this used to be like more covered up, but the existing structure partially collapsed, and now we are left with an open face, sort of a view of what this inner city structure looks like. Yes. But this is just the beginning, as you can tell, and I am about to continue further detailization and carvation and extravagation. Wow. And finally, it is the more meticulous part of the work where I go deeper into these individual rooms, adding layers and extra floors, portals and window openings. And like I've said previously, it's like I'm imagining how these inhabitants would have been living within this city. Who were their neighbors, and what was their occupation? Because if you go to such historic sites, like Vardzia for example, you'll see the different rooms and their functions written on modern plaques, offering some insight into who these people could have been, like a blacksmith, or a cobbler, or even a city doctor. There's even a monastery within the old city, and here I've also decided to suggest one, being here in the middle with three distinct arched entrances and a circular window atop the main entrance. So as I'm going through the rest of the rooms and chambers, I am reaching the final stages of this project, and with the last minute details, which I am working my way through removing my last few bits of material, I do a little celebratory dance, like every artist would do, and admire my progress just for a little while. But ah, what's this? I seem to have found a way to etch out an entirely separate structure out of this top left area. And of course, this being a more or less of a Vardzia tribute of sorts, I've decided to make this into a teeny-tiny temple that would sit atop this entire city, with stunning views opening up to an imaginary valley. So the process seems to be going well, the structure is becoming more and more precise, until... Ai yai yai, I broke the dome of the monastery. I was waiting for something like this to happen. I went, oddly enough, without any incidents whatsoever so far, and I've carved out really complicated areas with columns that are detached from the inner part of the room, so I've basically carved out rooms and everything, and I got a little greedy. I wanted to pierce window openings. How much would it be? Eight window openings. Eight? Yeah, and I picked up a very thin drill bit. Show me the size. Look at the size. Compare it to your finger. Look at the size of... Eight? Yeah. Eight? And I got greedy. But I think one of the blades of the drill bit caught on to the sandstone and just like ripped the entire dome off, and the remnants of that dome is here. I stepped on it. Yeah. And now what are you doing now? Now what I'm thinking is, and I've already kind of begun the process, I'm gonna hollow out the inside of this monastery. It is possible. Yep. I want to make a dome. I think it would be nice for me to carve that piece separately and then place it on top. So yeah, we'll continue tomorrow. Indeed we will. And the final day is here. Everything is done so far pretty okay. All the niches and archways and rooms have been carved out in a mid-level sort of way in terms of detailing. Now all that's left for me to carve out the steps and sharpen the angles where the columns meet the floor just to have them not so very rounded but more like corner-like to accentuate the architectural precision of this city. So yes. Oh boy, the stairs are done. As you can see, all these little steps leading up and down from different kinds of rooms are now connected and the city is indeed infrastructurally sound. Now the only thing that is left is the top part of this little monastery, the dome, which I want to carve out of this stone. I'm gonna probably break a little bit, a little piece off of this and then work out the details separately with the drill bit and then try to match the geometry as close as possible to the base structure. So yes, that is the next step. But before I do that, it is time for a little bit of an art break. Why of course, the serenity of nature, a great place to relax. Wait, hold on, why did you leave this in? I just thought it was funny. This is not necessary, dude, what the heck? Wait, let's just... Okay, okay, back to the relaxation with a warm cup of chamomile tea that is... What the hell is happening right now? Come on, man, I mean, I had to leave this. No, okay, this is good, this is good. You like it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I like it. Yeah, okay. Oh, as I was saying, finally, it is indeed all that an artist needs, a perfect getaway from all the worries of the world, even for just a bit. I think I'm gonna still leave those in. Please don't. Back to work. Now, like this part. Oh, cool, cool, cool. Nice, perfect. You see, it's huge, but cool. Coolest of the beans. There you go. Now I'm gonna do the same in this direction. Cut it up like that. Damn. I bruised my finger a little bit. Nothing too big. Stuff like this happens, especially when you rush things, so this is a mistake that I have been making very often. My left hand is damaged. There's so many scars. I'm not gonna show you. Do you actually think it's done? Yeah, man, there's a point at which you have to say enough is enough and you have to stop because all the steps are carved out. I can, you know, work on this forever at some point. Let me just try and see, like, is it worth... because I'm debating whether I should use this pottery tool to sharpen the corners of the columns. Like, what I mean by this is this. See the difference between the... Okay, I'm just gonna, like, add a few here and there because this is a very calming part of the work. No more drill bit noises and everything. I'm just gonna look around, see where I can sharpen these corners. And here it is, the final result. Let's take a closer look. So that's it. We're done. Come closer, come closer, listen to me. The work seems to be done quite well, the stone carving and everything, but... Why? Stop here! I'll take a nice picture of the structure, open up Photoshop, turn on OBS, and start rendering the inhabitants of the city doing various different activities in various different places. A man drinking his wine, someone rummaging in their little rooms, delivering grain to the neighbor, or smacking the dirt out of a few rugs, and BAM! What a sight of an ancient stone city that resembles a real-life place called Vardzia. Thank you for watching! I hope you had a wonderful time, and oh, look at that! These are our wonderful wizards from Patreon, who we want to thank for their support. Look at all these names. And if you want to be listed at our end screen as well and see some extra behind-the-scenes content and more, go and check out our Patreon page in the link below to see what you can find. Until then, have a wonderful day. Till next time!