Stamps #4 to 7

Things were starting to feel a little too geometric, so I decided to move on to more organic symbols. I'm interested in symbols and signs, so when I found a book about symbols on sale a couple of weeks ago, I bought it. It's written by a professor, so it should have some scholarly merit, but I mainly bought it for the beautiful artwork, to use for inspiration.

I've been planning to make a series of stamps based on ancient rock carvings and runes (please refer back to this blog entry for more on that subject). While doodling at a seminar last weekend I started drawing rock carvings that I made upp - mock carvings, you could say. They're based on real rock carvings that I'm familiar with, but I tried to avoid drawing them exactly like the real ones.

Mock carvings

My first plan was to turn these doodles into stamps, but then I had another idea. I decided to take objects in my home that didn't exist in prehistoric times and make them look like something that prehistoric man might want to carve into a rock.

Mock carvings inspired by objects in my home 

(a metal clip for a picture frame, a fork, a clock, a paper clip)

I made one practical discovery:
For more intricate shapes and small curves it's better to use something other than craft foam, unless you don't mind a jagged line.

And one interesting discovery:
I transfered the image to craft foam by drawing it with a soft leaded pencil on a piece of paper, flipping the paper over onto craft foam and rubbing the back of the paper. To reinforce the line I used a purple multimark pen. Here's the discovery: after I'd stamped the image I made a second (ghost) stamp and to my surprise, the purple line transferred:

This could be a bad thing, but it could also be used for some really cool effects:

The scan is of pretty poor quality, but I'm sure you can still see the markings I've drawn with a yellow multimark pen on the fun foam before I applied the ink. This has potiential, don't you agree? It just needs a bit more experimentation, because I don't know yet what it is that makes the pen lines trasfer. I used VersaCraft ink. Perhaps the ink dissolves the permanent ink in the multimark pen.

Pathways

Tomorrow’s my birthday, and then I’m one more step closer to the Big Bada Boom, which will happen next year. How surreal. I don’t see myself as someone soon-to-be-40. (And I can feel a long line of people before me who have said exactly the same thing…)

It’s also a new month and a new theme for The Sketchbook Challenge: Pathways. A good and inspiring theme. You see, with the Big Bada Boom approaching faster than I care to think, I’ve started looking at my life and choices with slightly different eyes. I look back, I look at the present, and I look to the future. And I contemplate what I see. About a year ago I realised that I’ve been a bit lost for a number of years. Somewhere along the path that I took things went missing. For instance, I stopped drawing and I stopped caring about mermaids. I didn’t stop being creative, but the projects I chose weren’t really the things I wanted to do in my heart of hearts. They were fun, useful and enjoyable, but in a way an ‘easy way out’. To my horror I realised that I had a habit of choosing my projects on the basis of whether or not they could be done in front of a TV show.

What I needed to do was to get out of my comfort zone, and to go back and pick up some of the things that I’d left behind. Such as drawing. And mermaids. I needed to find the magic and passion again. Let out that eccentric megalith-loving fairy-freak that's hiding behind the guise of a public servant. So I started treading myself a new pathway. I don’t know where it’s leading, but it feels good and it feels right.

Walk This Way

My first page for this month is inspired by ancient rock carvings. I visited Sweden last summer and was thrilled to come across authentic rock carvings and rune stones. Footprints like these could have been made simply by placing a wet foot on the rock, and then using the wet print as a guide when carving the rock. Please visit my Flickr photostream for the full image and a description of the techniques I used to create the page.

Rock carvings near Nyköping, Sweden. These would make great stamps!

A megalith-loving fairy-freak guised as public servant on holiday in Avebury, England