When I was in my mid-teens (fifty-five long years ago), I owned my first sign shop. I remember the time I designed and painted my first commercial truck doors. In those days, the design was created by hand and painted with a brush. I carefully laid out the first door and then brushed on the paint. It went well and turned out pretty good for a first effort. Then came the second truck door. I discovered that this was not nearly as much fun, and by the time that second door was finished, I had decided being a typical sign painter wasn’t for me. I LOVED designing and creating dimensional projects. Painting one-offs was perfectly OK. But doing multiple copies of flat painted signs was totally out of the question.

That same logic holds to this day, and that's most likely why I love sculpting concrete. There isn’t much repetition, and you are forced to work quickly, finishing before the concrete sets. Today’s task was to put the name on the transom of Vala’s pirate ship. Matt carved in the awesome woodgrains, and as soon as he was done, Henry and I carved in the lettering. I carefully incised the lines around the letters, and Henry’s job was to clean out the inside and gently smooth things up with a soft brush. We had fun, we were finished in about twenty minutes, and it was a whole lot more interesting than painting a second truck door!