With the word “Freedom” roughed out and the background levelled, I had to position and trace the lettering for the rest of the speech.
I had roughly decided where the words would go earlier on, to determine the position of “Freedom”.
“Freedom” had to be the most prominent word, but to give the carving a bit of interest I thought it best to stagger the other words and to vary the size of the font ; without doing this I think there was a danger of the plinth looking like a headstone. Alan Raw had said he wanted a quite contemporary feel, so that was a consideration too.
As well as varying the size of font, specific words from the speech (“strong”, “firmly” and “justice”) were emphasized by setting them in to recessed free-form shapes. I’d originally planned on putting them into rigid rectangular boxes, but the loose shapes seemed better suited to the theme of “freedom”.
This just left the event organizer’s logo (The Creative and Cultural Company) to go on a suitable spot on the right-hand side, and a rectangle to be cut out for the brass plaque (when it arrives). A couple of coats of oil and it’s all ready for the big event on Thursday and Friday.