I need to drink more Champagne. It must be done for the sake of art.
For the last couple of days, I’ve been carving rubber stamps. I’ve already finished about a dozen of them, in various sizes. Some I’ve mounted on small blocks of wood, but I’ve also made a bunch of smaller round ones sized specifically to be mounted on wine and Champagne corks. While I still have plenty of wine corks, I can’t say the same for Champagne–I only have three left, and it’s either drink up or raid the cat toys stash for the ones that haven’t been gnawed too badly.
And yes, I could go buy appropriately-sized dowels at Home Depot, bring them home, and chop as many mounts as I might desire on the miter saw. But for the month of January I’ve declared a moratorium on spending money on anything I don’t absolutely need. That includes all art supplies, because God knows I have more than enough of them as it is.
Champagne, however, is no problem. I already have half a dozen bottles in the fridge because I made good on 2007’s resolution and I now drink it often enough to warrant a stash. Go, me.
And I like reusing the corks for something besides cat toys. Since I’ve never been a big fan of symmetry and uniformity, I also like that they vary so much in size–from 5/8″ to 1-1/8″.
I have about a dozen more stamps in the works, and once I’m done with them I’ll spend some time experimenting with different ways to use them–printing decorative papers, using them to create collage elements, and using them to stamp on top of collage elements, for starters. So far, all I’ve done is test them with black ink in my sketchbook, but I’d like to see how different color and paper combinations work in both inks and acrylic paint. I might even dig into my fabric stash and try printing on muslin.
As far as motifs go, most are stylized flower, pod, and leaf shapes. A couple of them have been complicated, and one in particular was very time-consuming to carve, but on many I’ve kept them simple, leaving myself room to add details later.
I’d like to do some more elaborate, representational motifs, such as fish, lizards, insects, and birds. Funny how I’m not in the mood to do people, for once. I’d also like to do a full set of alphabet stamps based on my own handwriting, but that can wait.
I’m still making entries in my art journal and I’ll use these stamps there, too. In fact, painting entries in the journal helped prompt many of the ideas I’ve had for stamp designs, and as I feed those designs back into the journal and play with them some more it’s going to be interesting to see how they evolve and grow. And as I look at this entry and compare it to my earlier ones, I realize that something is finally clicking.
I’ve forced myself to paint and make some sort of art every single day (well, except one) for the last two weeks, and while I still engage in some pretty crappy self-talk I noticed today, while carving stamps, that I didn’t let that keep me from plunging in and experimenting. I didn’t talk myself out of trying certain designs or methods of carving for fear of producing something inadequate. I sat and worked, instead of my usual procrastination, and I enjoyed it. I ended up with a fistful of finished stamps, and while a few aren’t all that impressive some are pretty damned cool. I was able to think ahead to how I might use them without getting hung up on how I was going to market the finished results.
Oh, and on top of that, I found the battery charger for my camera, so photos of all this stuff are forthcoming–because I know it’s no use having an art blog if you don’t post the Pretty.
In other words, a successful day. I think that warrants cracking a bottle of Champagne.
