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Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Sharing

So yes, it was an hour's worth of carving alone to do the little stamp! Tonje asked and I guessed. The whole process...a couple hours start to finish. A good time frame for a project. Here is the finished image from tonight's brainsteam:



Oh, I wuv it! I do! I think I will do even more with these two, becoming great friends. Who knows?

Here is a step-by-step. First I sit and think though, I guess some of the groundwork is done while I'm bike riding, or doing dishes, but then I sit down and look at the paper and ask myself what do I see? Then, I sketch something:



This is using a plain ol' graphite pencil on newsprint paper. Then I turn the paper image-side onto the rubber stamp and rub it with the back of a spoon to create a transfer:



Then I carve it, and make a test print (not shown). This helps me fine tune it a bit. I do the test print with a regular stamp pad, and the prints with printing ink. Here is the stamp carved:



And then I roll on ink and try out different papers. The one at top is a piece of watercolor paper, with a watercolor wash. I made several different pages of that, with different colors. And then I tried it on a piece of printing paper (Stonehenge 100% cotton). I like them both equally for different reasons. Here's the plain/stonehenge:




I think one character's name might be 'Mina'. In japanese, mina means 'everyone'.

And did I mention how tiny these are? The eraser is 1 x 2.5" (2.5cm x 6.5cm, approx) I don't think I would have been able to do this using my previous method of exacto knife. And did I mention how nifty the Speedball carving tools are????

And oh yes, the cuppa Inka and scone: most divine. Now it's major yawn-time. I guess that bike ride really took the stuffin' outta me. Nighters!

1 comment:

eroica said...

i love this idea! anything miniature does it for me. :-)
i've got to try this technique...