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Iron board carving in relief
 Guo Hailong, who is two years old younger than his brother Guo
Haibo, became a fitter who assembles cars and motorcycles. Though the job
required him to work with cold steels all day long, he constantly thought about
his childhood hobby of sculpture.
One day, Guo Hailong used a hammer to beat an iron board, and surprisingly
found that the board was not as hard to reshape as he had expected. It took him
one day to finish his first iron board work "Head Portrait of an Ethnic Minority
Girl". When he finished the work, he very excitedly went to his elder brother
Guo Haibo, who had a profound interest in painting. Guo Haibo was astonished by
his younger brother's creation. Hence the two decided to dedicate all their
spare time in the art form.
Nonetheless, there was no precious experience to refer to, as not many, if
any, people had ever shaped out a two-dimensional relief on an iron board
before. Therefore, by themselves they had to prepare for everything from the
very beginning. It took them more than ten  years to gradually work out a set of methods from
choosing suitable iron boards to carving on the boards.
After choosing the right boards, the second step was to design a sketch
before actually working on the board. The biggest problem was how to clearly
draw the sketch on the board without rubbing the sketch away. After many
failures, the brothers by chance found that carbon paper
was the best choice.
The hardest procedure is the forging process, which
requires not only artistic inspiration but also physical strength. Usually, a
normal work takes a few days to finish. Once the forging is completed, another
important step is to remove the rusts since iron rusts very easily. Even if
there is only one rust spot, it must be eliminated, or else, it will soon
generate more rust that reproduces like viruses, which will damage the whole
artwork.
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