Monday, February 03, 2014

combining a couple of interests

The big news, if you happen to be a fan of Diana Gabaldon and her Outlander series of books, is the fact that the first book, Outlander, is being made into a series which will air on Starz (in the US) this fall. That's interest number one—I rather enjoy these books. :-)

The second one is crafting, and more specifically, rubber stamping. My idea to combine these two came from a photo that I'd seen that was taken and posted on Twitter by Matt Roberts, one of the producers of the show. It was a shot of the actors portraying the main characters, Jamie and Claire, taken outdoors in minimal lighting. It was very atmospheric, and it stuck in my mind. After a few days I finally downloaded it and converted it to grayscale, thinking that it would look wonderful as a silhouette and that it just might be an image that would lend itself to being carved in rubber. I do like the look of hand-carved stamps. Here's how it turned out.



That's the edited photo and my subsequent carving up above.




And this is how it looked when I inked it up with some Versafine and stamped it. Didn't get Jamie's nose quite right and I tried to correct it a bit (hence the second stamped image post nose job), but all in all, not too bad for a first try.


7 comments:

  1. Wow -- great job on the stamp carving! Thanks for the news about the Outlander series. I love the books, although I have only gotten through the first four. I am nervous about it being recreated on the TV screen because I have a picture in my mind of what the characters look like, and I'm not sure the real actors will meet up with my "vision".

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I've found that I don't really have a concrete picture of the characters in my mind, but I do have strong notions about their personalities. So I don't worry much about whether an actor necessarily looks like the character, but rather whether they will act in the way that I've come to expect. That said, I have enough of a mental image that if the casting is very different, then I find it jarring. So far I can't complain about the cast of Outlander. I hope I can say the same after seeing the series.

      Delete
  2. Wow that is a wonderful stamp, clever you so pleased to "see" you again. :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Never tried this...your first time is Awesome!!!! By the way, how did you convert your picture to grayscale....in what program? Curious to know how.
    Jan Castle castle 77 at comcast dot net

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think that most editing applications have some way of converting to grayscale or black and white. I used Pixelmator on my iMac. When I was on a PC I used Paint Shop Pro — loved it and wish that I could have continued using it with a Mac, but that wasn't an option. iPhoto also has a filter that will convert images to black and white. I find that it's just easier to see what needs to be carved out or left untouched if the image is simple.

      Delete
  4. What. Fabulous stamp! I love the Diana Gabaldon books and I'm desperately trying to find out if they will be shown in the UK

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for visiting my blog and for taking the time to leave a comment. :-) Don't be surprised if your comment doesn't show up right away. Because of the amount of spam being posted these days, I've switched things over to moderated. Legitimate comments will be appreciated, approved, and published in a timely fashion.

LinkWithin

Blog Widget by LinkWithin