Blog

Rubber stamp art

A few weeks ago, the Makerspace hosted some ‘Make your own Rubber Stamp art’ workshops. These sessions were the result of our collaboration with Curtin’s Student Wellbeing Advisory Service.

Participants were lucky enough to be guided by AHC McDonald, who is amongst other things, a Student Wellbeing Advisor and fine art rubber stamp printmaker.

Stamp printing using rubber blocks is a great, accessible method of making a relief print - Relief printing is when you carve into a printing block that you then use (with ink or paint) to press onto paper and make a print.

To make the stamps, participants were supplied with a rubber-carving block, a pencil, some carving tools, stamping ink, and paper. They were also asked to bring along an image that they wanted to recreate.

A pencil transfer method was used to create a mirror image of the picture onto the rubber. This was achieved by heavily tracing over the picture, placing the image face down onto the rubber, and then using a metal spoon to press the graphite outline onto the surface.

Various cutting tools were used to carve out the design – whilst keeping in mind that the carved out parts would not be printed. Ink was then stamped on the rubber before it was carefully placed onto the paper.

As these photos show, everyone had plenty of fun experimenting with different designs. We look forward to working with the talented team from Student Wellbeing again, in the not too distant future.