Okay, I finally got it finished. :) Several people have mentioned the little tutorial I did about preparing a portrait (or any other image, really) for a multi-block stamp. The original process was outlined at:

http://www.atlasquest.com/boards/message.html?gMsgId=70702

I finally got around to carving the three part image outlined in the tutorial and you can peek in on the carved Rochester portrait, if you wonder how it turned out. In order to get a good scan, I had to use a darker, thicker ink for the highlight part than I really liked and it has a little texture, but the really cool sepia tone version I tried doesn't scan well at all, so I had to compromise.

http://www.stampeaz.com/images/rochester_carved.jpg

I hope it helps to see how it comes out at the end, and I hope it will also encourage some intrepid carvers to try this technique -- it's really fun!!

Carve on!!

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Several people have mentioned the little tutorial I did about preparing a portrait (or any other image, really) for a multi-block stamp. The original process was outlined at:

http://www.atlasquest.com/boards/message.html?gMsgId=70702

Excellent. Question: The two lighter colors apparently stamp only where the two lighter colors go. What would happen if the lightest color went everywhere the other two colors went, and the middle color went everywhere the darkest color went? So if you stamp with the light color first, it'd cover most of that image space, leaving only a few white spots. Then when you stamped with the medium color it would cover most of the light-colored areas. And when you finally stamped with the darkest, it would cover most of the medium-colored areas.

Perhaps it makes little difference, but it occurs to me that doing it this way might make the correct alignment of the three stamps a little less critical. With a slight misalignment, for example, you could end up with a bright white line between a medium-colored area and a dark area, which might look bad. But if the medium color filled in all such possible gaps, the misalignment wouldn't be so noticeable.

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What would happen if the lightest color went everywhere the other two colors went, and the middle color went everywhere the darkest color went?

Good question! Actually, I do them that way sometimes, too. It sort of depends on the image. There are times when the white lines showing between the imperfectly registered images will add to the three dimensional effect of the multi-block print. The other thing that happens when you use dye inks that are less opaque is that you can plan your overlaps and get more colors by layering them. In other words, you can partly overlap the light and medium colors and get three colors, instead of two. Then partly overlap the darkest color over the other two and end up with five or six different colors because of the way they layer. There are lots of ways to play with multi-blocks!!

It can be somewhat faster to carve them the way you describe and you can use the same process I did in the tutorial for preparing the image, but when it's time to separate the colors, simply select all three colors for the lightest stamp, the two darker colors for the medium one and the darkest color for the darkest one and carve away all the white, just like normal. :)

Someone let me know if I just made that as clear as mud, okay?? ;-)

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