Ammonite

An only art edition

Back with more time lapse videos of the carving process! Not sure how exactly an ammonite spiral came into my head but it simply would not go away. This past Sunday, I put Anastasia (1997) on and finally carved the design into a block. If I had more patience I would have fooled around with the tripod setup, but I don’t. And of course my head got in the frame as I filmed.

inspo images from Pinterest

These are some of the reference images I looked at while sketching the design.

I carved into an eraser I got from Dollar Tree; working with less expensive material takes the pressure off and rubber is rubber. For this carving, I stained the block with some brown stamp ink. This creates a guide to help me get my bearings and cut with more precision. I scored the perimeter of the spiral first; then I carved away the background.

This is like all the top of the right side of my head — my bad. The block was way smaller than the one I carved for “Pool Day”; whenever I work with smaller blocks, inevitably my face ends up inches away from the design.

Regrettably, the carve of the inner spiral was not filmed. I didn’t even know if I wanted to carve out that part and was worried that doing so may be the design’s death knell. So I lost an incredibly satisfying, one continuous line carve. Please forgive me.

I wasn’t sure how to best approach the inner ridges of an ammonite shell so I just went with my gut and worked quickly — no room for second guessing.

the prints// the stamp + sketch

Just a stamp ink for this print at the moment! I want to do a major inking day soon and when I do, this design will be on the slate.