Week 3 - Carving a dragon stamp

This week I took time out from the rather intense sewing of the first dragons to try some stamp carving.

I know I should have designed my own dragon but I had previously found this image recurring on tattoo sites and really liked it.  It has appeared on many sites and I couldn't find any attribution for the original artist. If anyone recognises it please let me know.

I had to redraw the design and squish it in a bit to fit the size of the stamp I was carving.

Using baking paper I traced over the design and filled in the solid parts with a soft lead pencil. 
This was then transferred to the white carving rubber by placing the paper face down and rubbing  over the back of the paper with a harder pencil.  
That left the carbon image from the soft lead pencil on the white rubber.

These solid black parts will be left as the stamp and the white surrounds will be carved away.

 

I used an 8cm square eraser from Batik Oetoro http://www.dyeman.com/

This is an Australian company run by Lynne Britten who is extremely helpful and knows all there is to know about dyeing and printing and the materials to use.

The nice thing about these erasers is that they are thick enough to turn over and carve both sides. Two stamps in one!

 
 

For the carving I used a proper lino cut tool and a wood carving tool, the lino cut was the better of the two and sliced through the rubber like butter, sometimes slicing a little too easily but that was my inexperience at using it!

 
 

As I carved I  kept stopping to stamp what I had done just to keep an eye on how it was progressing.

 

So now I have a nice little Asian dragon stamp, which I intend using later to print a backdrop for a wall hanging.