Carving a luna moth stamp

I have had this stamp material with a luna moth drawn on it since April, when I attended Pamela Underwood's "Living with Images as Companions" workshop at her beautiful Turtle Crow Studio in Austin. I finally decided to tackle carving, and learned two (probably more) things.

1 -- It's not that hard and it does not take very long. I spent a total of 45 minutes carving it.

2 -- It's going to take some practice to develop this skill.

3 -- I could get into this! Carving is relaxing and meditative. I listened to Ray Montagne on Pandora and got into my zone.

I am satisfied with the stamp, but it has lots of warts that don't show up well in the photo. Curves are tricky. Removing stamp material cleanly from the edges of the image takes concentration and practice.

Mostly finished

Finished stamp with a few pen details -- stamp pad was a bit dried out.

Now to figure out where to get a luna-moth-green stamp pad. Any ideas?

Update: Someone asked me how I will stabilize this stamp. I don't plan to stabilize it -- I place it flat on a table and ink it, then place the paper on the stamp. It's about 6" tall, and storing a block of wood or piece of foam core that large would take lots of space.

Lavender Sage Art Retreat

Four days with 10 wonderfully creative women, making art in a beautiful studio in the Texas hill country with two amazing teachers. Wow! We learned about monoprinting, collage, sketching, watercolor painting, blind contour drawing, continuous line contour drawing, image transfer, journaling, making a box, and best of all we learned about ourselves as artists. We visited art galleries, ate some great barbecue and Mexican food, and our chef Tess fed us very well at the Studio. We spent time sketching at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. I am truly grateful for the connections that we made with each other, and for the opportunity to observe such talented artists. Oh, and I had all kinds of fun, too!

Next Lavender Sage Art Retreat is in April, 2012.

Thanks to Sona for lunch and a visit to her beautiful home and studio on Monday. What a treat! From Sona's Colleen and I went to S. Congress to visit Uncommon Objects and Tesoros where we managed to acquire even more "stuff" than we did in Salado. By then we needed a snack and hit Guero's down the street before we left for Oklahoma, where we arrived home about 1:30am. Tired but happy.

I have posted my photos to MobileMe and I'll upload to the flickr group soon. Here's one of my favorites from the Wildflower Center. I believe this is Texas sage; it was blooming everywhere.