Carved rubber stamp - octopus

I bought a rubber plate which is intended to be carved (so this time no poor eraser is to be sacrificed ^^). They even had bigger sizes than this but for testing it was enough. The subject was, there will be no surprise, an octopus.

I used my beloved scalpell and my first (and only) linocut tool (I need a lot more of them!). To be honest, I think on this size rubber is not the ideal material anymore. To soft for really fine lines. But it is fun to work with and afterwards it is really great to use it for stamping!

But I think I am tempeted to work with linoleum... hu... my last linocut was... I think it is over.. let's say a long time ago...! Sometime at school... Linocut itself was never something which occured in my mind as being something you should try... but after realising that carving stamps is not really different from it (and gives the oportunity for really fine lines!) this totally changed! Okay, you still need the rubber to press the paper or fabric gently to the linocut. Stamping itself will be a little bit more difficult but nothing to bad...

It is not perfect, you can see some dots here and there which are not intended... (I will work a little bit more with it) but still I love it!

For getting the stamp ink on the rubber I used a small rubber roll like you do with linocut! Also an good thing to use with fabric paints (which are really smoot and creamy) and stamps! So you can be sure not to use too much paint on the stamp and not to smear the finer details.