Hurghada - Soapstone Sculpting

Sculpting in the Sun

Finally, I got to the stage where I could resume a more-or-less normal life over here. Up until the beginning of January, it was pretty busy as other owners of apartments here came and went, so there were quite a few parties and social get-togethers.

Now, towards the end of January, the sea is starting to get colder, maybe about 22 degrees. It takes a bit of courage on my part to get in the water, but once I’m swimming it’s fine, although there is a slight cold undertone, even as I swim. It’s not enough to disturb, but it’s a sign that it’s winter.

Anyway, now that the water is getting cooler, I don’t mind so much if I take a few days off swimming to do something else. So, I ended up signing up for a sandstone sculpting course.

It took place in the courtyard of a café in Hurghada called Purrfect Cuppa. I’ve never been there, but I’d heard a lot about it, because it was set up by a friend of a friend (this is how things go in Hurghada) and many people I know have eaten there, taken a course, or worked there.

As you might guess, it has a lot of cats. They are street cats / abused cats that have been adopted and brought back to health by the owner. The cats have free run of the place and you can squirt them with water if you want them not to appear at your table.

It’s run by a British woman and, for me, the best part is that they sell the most wonderful cakes at a reasonable price. On the first day of my course, I was restrained and had just one piece of coffee cake, but on the second day I had chocolate fudge cake and carrot cake. And I never got round to tasting the rather wonderful looking lemon meringue pie and all the wonderful shortbread and other biscuits. It’s a delight to have some properly British cake.

But I guess I’m supposed to be talking about the course. There were only three of us in the end, but it made it nice and small and we all knew each other, so it was very relaxed. The course itself was run by a friend’s sister who was visiting. We had to choose our piece of soapstone, which came in either a creamy green colour or a grayish black. I made the mistake of being too ambitious, as I felt inspired to make my stone into a fish. The other two participants did abstract sculptures and in retrospect that would have been best for me to do, but I wasn’t feeling inspired by that on the day.

We had to lay our stones on a pillowcase of sand (which if you had cat pee in it, could smell!), then sketched, then chipped away to make holes, then smoothed them, and then polished. I'm sure you can make up you own jokes. It may be January, but it was still 26 degrees (particularly hot those days, which was a bit annoying as they were good swimming days!), so we all got pretty hot.

It was very relaxed; we started off with coffee, had lunch, and then another coffee in the afternoon. The Purrfect Cuppa often has art courses of some kind running so there was a whole class of people on the first day there learning how to paint a sunset.

We were stopped by many customers wanting also to take the course and asking all sorts of questions. Because I was doing a small piece, I was finished earlier, so I used a spare bit of stone, which I thought looked like a lion, to further practice. I’d like to go again and do something larger and more abstract, I think. My pieces were OK but probably need advanced skills to get them really to look like animals.

I’d love to give it another go. It made for a fun two days and potentially for a new hobby!