Sustained Investigation #1

The main idea that guided this artwork is my sustained investigation question for this semester, this being the first piece officially revolved around it. My sustained investigation question was "How can you capture the universe through art?" I was aware that the art room had the materials to make stamps, but the last time I made one was in foundations of art freshman year.  After a few different initial ideas, I had to figure out different space forms to make into stamps. I choose to make a bunch of different cartoon looking stares on one stamp so I could have a consistent night sky as well as the sun and the moon since that's a common and recognizable space form as well as the fact I wanted to make another moon after I liked how the carved one turned out back when I did the clay project.

I took a giant piece of stamp bloke out of a cabinet in the art classroom. I cut into it to create a rectangle and two small squares. This gave me the size I wanted for the stamps. I got a carving tool as well which had a compartment on the back wich one could unscrew to get different types of sharp carving heads that performed different tasks. For this project, I mostly switched between the second thinnest tool to create the outlines of different areas of the stamp and the second widest to carve out all the negative space quickly. After I was done carving the stamps I got out paper, ink, a glass sheet, and an ink roller to creat prints with the stamps. When making prints its important to get the right texture of ink on the service you are rolling it on, you know when you have it by the sound. When pressing down the stamps its important to keep them as still as possible (they like to slide) while applying pressure to all areas before pealing it of the paper. 

My original idea for this project was far different from what it was going to be originally, but it was still a stamp. I sketched out an image of the Greek goddess Artemis in my sketch book and wanted to make a print of that. I even cut out and sketched out that same image on a pice of stamp block. Then I went to practice carving something on a scrape pice and realized I had to experience or skill with the medium at all. This combined with the tight schedule of the project lead me to panic and start over with something easier. That is when I began sketching out the different space forms I would eventually carve out for this project.