This week in honor of spring break, I chose to do a fun little personal project with my boyfriend Connor! Both Connor and I have done linoleum cuts before in college so we decided it would be fun to make a random little stamp. The first step was to buy a big eraser that we cut in half with a pair of scissors. I got the slightly larger half, because my composition was longer in length, and Connor got the shorter half.

I wanted to create a little character so I chose to make a goofy looking chunky monkey holding a banana. I started by sketching out my idea and concept to make it come to life. Once it was sketched onto the eraser I took a larger deep blade of my carving tool to take away the excess blank space, then went in to the stamp with a small tool to get minor details such as the eyes, mouth, and arm.

Connor chose to do a skull with horns. He chose his concept and sketched just as I did. After his sketching process, he used a small tool first to get the small details in, and then switched to a larger carving blade to get rid of the surrounding edges!

We both inked out our stamps with black speedball ink and did tests in a specific sketchbook I made for printing tests! The image is reversed when printed and overall this was really fun to do, and experiment with.

We did not know what each other made until the end which made this process even better!