Create an Ex-Libris Stamp

1. Introduction Ex Libris: Hi, I'm Emily. I'm an artist, printmaker, and educator. I run a small printmaking studio called cooler, and my goal with the studio is to be a gateway into printmaking and introduce this fun art form to a broader audience. I believe printmaking is really accessible for beginners and is particularly fun for those of you who may not be super confident with your drawing skills, as there is something quite magical with printed image and simple bold design always look great. I've been working as a printmaking educators for years, and I have developed some easy curriculum to introduce you to the art of block printmaking through a small project that will give you a great insight into the key principle of relief printmaking. In this course, I will guide you step by step to create your own libris. Ex-Libris are personalized books stamps, typically used by libraries to mark their book collection. And in this class, I will teach you how to design, card, and assemble your own libris to mark your own book collection. This project is achievable in a few hours once you've collected on the material, but it will provide you with an understanding of the key concept of designing for stamps and printing by hand. This will give you the autonomy to keep exploring block printmaking at home with easy to source material. Let's get started in the project and meet me in the next video to learn a bit more about Ex-Libris. 2. More about block print: Printmaking is a broad family that encompasses different techniques. Block print or relief printmaking is the most ancient traditional style of printmaking, and it turns out it's the easiest one to start with. It's also the technique of the printmaking family that is the easiest to do at home with little materials. Relief printmaking earliest example we have come from Eastern Asia in China and then in Japan. When woodcarving was used as early as the fifth century to create stamp for early Chinese character and later to produce images, which has led to the beautiful tradition of Japanese woodblock. It is only much later in the West that wood blocks were used to create book plates and printed image. And then 130 years ago, artists started to use nonum, a new material made out of cork, but was starting to get used to tile kitchens and bathrooms. The oldest example of a linocut carved by an artist is now 130-year-old, and the tradition of linocut has flourished to the point that it is a leadle material carved today in the tradition of relief printmaking. Other alternative includes carving vinyl plates, sometimes called green lino and more recently Rubber block. If you ever carved out your eraser at school to stamp your composition book, you intuitively discover block printmaking for yourself. Or maybe you've tried potato stamp as a kid. It's the same principle. Carve your material to create a negative image, then ink the uncarved surface and transfer it onto paper. Pretty straightforward. In this course project, we'll focus on carving rubber, which is the easiest material of the block print family to carve. So it's a great place to start. You'll be able to focus on the design and learning the key principle without the time consuming process of carving larger lino plate, for instance. But the principle remains no matter the scale, so you'll be equipped for more ambitious printmaking project. 3. Materials for stamp making: For this course, you would need some general art supplies as well as some specific printmaking materials. First of all, you would need some carving rubber. Leading brands include speedball with their lovely smooth pink rubber, but a lot of other brand exist, and I would recommend looking for rubber that has a smooth surface. Indeed, some bran have a grainier texture, which I like less, and some other more off white rubber can be a bit crumbly. Some other like these ones have two different color on the surface and inside, which can be great to see how deep you're carving. Rubber can be quite expensive, and it's hard to find alternatives to it. But some printmaker collects large novelty erasers to print on or experiment with non traditional materials. Make sure you share your experiment in the forum. Then you will need some carving tools, also called gouge. Again, some leading professional brands include file, but despite having an all set up printmaking studio and some professional tools, I find myself always coming back to those simple affordable tools. Speedball also have this gouge with different tips that you can change. It's affordable and good enough quality and great to bring with you to carve on the go. Whatever you use, make sure you have at least two different gouge. One shape, and one U shaped one. They would create different type of mark making, and just one of each would get your long way. And that's it for specialized materials. If you look at entry level brand, you should be able to equip yourself for $30 or so. You may also want to get yourself some fine art quality ink pads. Of course, an office inkpad will do, but for a better inking and more prints, I would recommend fine art quality ink pads such as the Tutti Kelo brand. The rest of the material needed for this course are basic art supplies. You will need an HB pencil, and if you can, ideally, a greasier one tells you two B or four B one, but you can totally do the course without that. You want to get yourself a bold ink tool like a marker, such as a sharpie. Sharpies are cheap and probably the printmaker best friend. They help you design bold black and white design, and the thickness of the line is comparable to what you'd be able to carve as a beginner. You would want some paper, nothing fancy, some A for paper from the printer would do. And I'll be working on a cutting mat with a pair of scissors, a box cutter, and a bone folding tool, which I'll describe later, but is also absolutely optional. I will describe a variety of option for you to assemble your stamp onto a backing. You can use some ready made object such as door knob or cod hanger to create your stamp. But for this course, I would describe how to use a MDF disc that I got laser coded. I've included the template in the resources, and you may be surprised to discover that your local library has a laser coded that you can access for an affordable cost. I would describe alternative to this in assembling your stamp section of this course. Okay. 4. Design research: I recommend doing a quick Google image search for Ex-Libris to start generating some ideas. Don't get too excited about some very fine design that you might not be able to carve out for your first stamp. But keep in mind, any image can be adapted in different ways for print, and in this course, I will help you understand how. But doing a good Google image search and building up a mood board is really part of the creative toolbox or skill set. And there's a bit of a myth amongst beginner that we creative, come up with ideas out of thin air. But no, we all work with reference images. The creative work may be elsewhere on how you adapt it, transfer it to a different technique or style, or even how your own drawing style or lack of has altered and transformed your inspiration. You can use Pinterest or Instagram to tab and save your inspiration to create a visual mood board. Or you can keep a visual diary where you print out and doodle some ideas. Whatever works for you and is easy to incorporate into your workflow or busy life. And for this class, if you rip off an existing design found on the Internet, by all means, go ahead. I always tell my student, copy, copy, copy, steal as much as you can, as long as you credit who you took inspiration from. But all artists have started out by copying and you pick up so many skills along the way. This course is first here to equip you with the skill to get started in stamp making and block print. We're here to discover a process and workflow. So if your design for this project is inspired by someone else, by all means, go ahead and practice that way. You'll be surprised along the way how your own original ideas are going to start flowing through the making. 5. Carving basics: All right, let's have a look at your carving tools or Guges. There are a lot of brands available, but I like these simple ones. Whatever you're using, make sure you have a V shaped one and a U shaped one that's more like a scoop. Beware, they are sharp and it is easy to stab yourself. Let's do a little demo for safety and to get to know your carving tools. First, I hold my carving tool with my whole fist, not like a pencil or pen. I then pop my index finger, my pointing finger, into the gouge for better grip, and I go into the rubber with a bit of a 45 degree angle to start digging into the rubber. Once I'm in, I start to straighten my tool more parallel to the block to prevent from digging a hole through your rubber. You really don't need to go too deep. As long as your nail get caught in the groove, it will leave a mark once you imprint it. Always carve away from you and not toward yourself to imit the risk of stabbing yourself. I do recommend having some band aid handy just in case I've cut myself so many times, I have little V shaped and U shaped scars on my fingers. Try and practice some straight lines, some wobbly lines. And for an extra challenge, try and create a little circle. When doing so, I usually find myself rotating my block instead of my tool. Sometimes the rubber gets caught and you need to finish petting it with your finger, and that's absolutely fine. You are starting for this course with the easiest material to carve of the whole block family. Then after that would come the vinyl, the lin, and then the wood. But the principles stay the same. So once you've completed this course, you would have the key principle of block printmaking and you'd be able to move on to carving larger print on different materials. Let's come back to your V shape and your U shape tool. They are going to be creating different mark onto your block. The V shape one tend to create a finer line, especially if you stay onto the surface. It's like drawing with a fine liner. And the U shape one is going to create a bolder line, so it's more like drawing with a sharpie or a marker. This is going to give you a feel of the different type of mark making you want for your design. But generally speaking, I would recommend starting with your V shaped tool to contour the entirety of your design, and then you can move onto your U shaped tool to remove larger area for white background. Keep in mind that it is quite hard to keep a clean, crisp white surface in stamp making or in relief printmaking in general, which is not necessarily a problem in itself. Some of the background may catch a little bit of ink and create some beautiful texture, which are quite typical of your stamp aesthetic. Why not embrace it? But since it's likely that it would show, I would recommend being intentional in the direction in which you're carving. Depending on your design, you might want to be carving horizontally or vertically, or even in a radiating fashion. But if you really need a clean white patch in your design, you can still achieve it. The trick is not so much going deeper but going smoother. You want to carve out anything that is poking out, the crest created by your carving. Beware that this can be a bit of a rabbit hole. It's catching ink somewhere unwanted, you carve it out, creating an imbalance in your block, and then it catches in elsewhere and so on. The edge of your stamp are likely to always be catching unwanted ink. So usually we'll finish off carving our block by beveling the edge of a rubber stamp with a carving tool. 6. Cutting your block: You can design your libris in any shape, but for this course, we are going to be working on a circular slam of eight centimeter in diameter. Let's go ahead at Prep our Block. Trace your eight centimeter diameter circle with a compass or just with a glass or jar. I'm going to be using my MDF circle to trace my templates onto my rubber block. Then we're going to go ahead and carve out this shape with a box cutter. Depending on the stickness of your rubber, you may want to use quite a bit of strength or even stand up for a better grip. Try to carve out your rubber in one go to avoid irregular shape. And here, you now have your block ready to design on and carve out for your stamp. 7. Your design: G. Here are a few example of elements that are commonly found in stamp design, ribbons, bands, stars or little dots. Often, your stamp would have a border element, potentially including text, going all around or over half of your stamp, and there would be a central element that is more illustrative. This template is an easy one to follow for your first time. Your name all around in a band or a ribbon and a symbolic, simple image that represent you in the center. Let's talk about the lettering. You don't have to, but most stamps will include some text, your name, brand, model, or any short message you wish to have up here. Pay attention to example in stamp design. Don't get too ambitious with the quantity of text you include in your design. Letter are hard as you will have to individually carve them out. Consider something simple like Jasmine's library or Fernando's book or just your name and your surname. During this course, I will constantly encourage you to simplify your design. From experience, beginners often get carried away with small details of font that you won't be able to carve. For best results, keep it simple. Block letters, simple geometric shape. Silhouettes are great. Cats, birds, flower, for instance. Let's get started on generating some idea for your ex libris. The way I like to do it, I like to start by tracing the outside of my libris to have a box or a template to work from. Of course, you can design your libris in any shape, but for this course, we're going to focus on the project on an eight centimeter diameter rubber block. I have my backing ready, so I'm going to use them to trace my template. I'm going to trace three or four circle to have option to test out a variety of design. Having looked at some existing design, you notice that debris often have a few key element, text and an image, a central element, and a border. Try out a variety of each element in your circle, a cat silhouette and the name and the ribbon around it, for instance, an octopus and a circular border with little dots. Just doodle a few simple ideas with pencil into your template and share those in the forum. They don't have to be too polished. Just rough sketch idea is fine for now. In the next video, we will look at how to adapt your ideas specifically for stamp design. 8. Designing for stamps: Now that you have generated some design ideas, we're going to see how to adapt it for stamp making. As we discussed, stamp making is part of the broader family of block printmaking or relief printmaking. Indeed, we are creating an image by carving out some part of our block and leaving some other uncarved or in relief. What we remove will appear as white or the color of the paper, and what we leave will stay in relief, catch the ink, and then be printed onto the paper. This is quite unnatural to us as we're more used to drawing with a black ink tool onto some white paper. But here, we're doing the opposite. We're creating some white or negative space. It's almost like drawing with a white marker onto some black paper. And you can practice your stamp design that way if you wish to help you get a feel for it. This is probably the steepest learning curve of this course. But once you've done your first stamp, it will all start to make sense. Any image can be adapted for stem design. Take a simple shape, such as a star. We tend to draw it as such with a black outline onto some white paper. But if we do the same thing onto our rubber block, we're going to endop with something like this. If you wish to achieve a white background, you're going to have to carve out all of the white and simply leave this black outline in relief. Most design end up being a bit of a mix of black background and white background. And in this course, I encourage you to design a stamp that has both elements. This will allow you to practice both technique and get a better understanding of the key principle of relief printmaking. 9. Transfering your design: After our last exercise, you would have generated a handful of ex libris stamp designs. Now it's time to come into one and start carving. You may have done the hardest for now on, you'll be on rains. All the creative workload is done, we're getting into production. Make sure your design has a mix of black and white background that will be achievable for you to carve as a beginner. You can always practice your design on a scratch plate or onto some black paper with some white paint. You want to make sure you understand what is going to be black or the color of your ink and what is going to be white or the color of your paper. Now that you're happy with your design, it's time to transfer it onto your block so we can carve it as a stamp. Nothing stop you from drawing directly onto your rubber block. Nothing even stops you from carving directly into it. As a beginner, you can experiment with carving doodles. Why not try it on your scraps. But for this project, I'm going to show you how to transfer your design on paper onto your rubber block. This has the benefit of flipping your design in a mirrored fashion, which is what you want for your stamp. Indeed, if you have a look at some shock bought stamps or a printmaking plate, such as a linocut, you notice that the design is mirrored. When in printed, the design flips back the correct way. Most of the time, it's not too important. But for stamp making, the odds are your design includes some text or letters. And this is really the only case where flipping your design is crucial for the readability of your stamp design. So let's get transferring. Grab your design and go over it one more time with a two B or four B pencil. B pencils are greasier and leave a bolder mark, and they are perfect for tracing and transferring. So take your time to really rub in some pencil powder or graphites onto your drawing. Now, flip it with the pencil mark onto your block. I usually switch back to an HB pencil as the tip is harder and I just rub the back. Alternatively, you can use a bone folding tool. It's a bit quicker, but the pencil works fine, and you can see where you already rub your design off. Make sure you really hold the paper in place lest you get a blurry transfer. You can have a peep and check that the design is transferring correctly, but make sure to hold your paper with your finger so it doesn't move. Here you are. Your design is now drawn onto the block in the mirror fashion. I strongly recommend going over your design one more time with a bone marker like a sharpie. This will prevent your design from rubbing off and disappearing as you start carving. All you have to do is carve everything but the sharpie. Remember, in relief printmaking, everything that stays in relief will catch the ink and appear as black, and everything that is carved out will stay white. It is a bit counterintuitive because we're so used to drawing with a black tool onto some white paper. But here we're doing the opposite with our carving tool. We're creating white or negative space. This is probably the steepest learning curve of this course to get used to thinking in a subtractive way, in a negative way. But once you've done it for your staff, it will become clearer and you can carry this skill into larger printmaking projects such as linocut print, for instance. 10. Carving your stamp: All right. Let's get started into carving your stem. As I said before, we will start by using the V shaped carving tool to contour and silhouette everything. Go slow and steady. It takes a little while to improve your carving skills, so don't be discouraged. I was quite clumsy when I started carving myself. But you can get some creative, energetic, rough design that also looks great. Remember, in stamp making bold and simple design, always look best. But to make progress, nothing like practice. Make stamp for your friends, and in no time you will get a level of control that will allow you to carve some finer details. When I'm facing something quite delicate to carve, I force myself to slow down. Remember, you can always carve some more, but you can't put it back. Once you've silhouette everything, you may have identified some larger patch that needs to be carved out. Now it's time to switch to your U shaped carving tool. This will allow you to remove some background elements and to create flatters surface carved out. Some carving sets have different size U shape, and you can get some rather large ones that are useful when you move to larger blocks. 11. Printing ! : Once you think you've carved up everything, it's time for your first test print. The odds are after your first inking and printing, you'll notice some area that needs some edits. This will allow you to see clearer what catches the ink and what doesn't. When it comes to ink pads, I recommend getting some good quality ones such as these ones. The office one can vary in quantity, and although you can find some really good one, they often have an edge that prevents you from inking larger stamps. Also, unlike your office stamps that you can squeeze into the inkpad and onto the paper, I recommend with your hand carve stamp being a bit more delicate when inking your stamp. Indeed, our hand carved stamp are less regular and it's easy to over ink the background when squeezing it too hard into the inkpad. Instead, I recommend holding your stamp in one hand and the ink pad in the other and gently dabbing them against one another. Moving your block and your pad constantly to create an even inking through repetition. You want to see a shiny, even layer of ink all over the surface of your stamp. A good inking will make all the difference when printing your design. Once it's all shiny and wet with ink, it's time to test it onto some paper. Smooth paper works best as you don't want too much texture or grain getting in the way of your design. Brown paper is also excellent because the black ink contrasts beautifully on it. All right, with confidence, lower your stamp onto the paper and apply a firm, even pressure on it. Let's check. Not too bad for our first test. Now I can see clearly that some area is catching a bit too much ink and need to be removed. This allows us to move on to creating some edits. It's much easier to see now that it's been inked once. Take your time and do as many tests as you need until you get a satisfying print. 12. Conculsion: That's it. We're done. You have your very own personalized slippers. You can now stamp your book collection, your record collection, and never lose an item to a friend. Also great for stamping your card boxes with moving house or any item you wish to identify. And this small project has now equipped you with all the skills you need to start your journey in stamp making and test out other style of relief printmaking. Why not start building a collection of stamps? I keep mine in jars, and I make one every time I go traveling. I call them supumsmps. In my next course available soon, I will show you how to carve a collection of sushi stamps to create a wrapping paper, and in a more advanced course, I will teach you how to create modular multicolor stamps. I hope to see you there. Bye.