Creature Creations Café: Oo...Ouroboros...oO

"The Ouroboros or Uroboros (/jʊərɵˈbɒrəs/; /ɔːˈrɒbɔrəs/, from the Greek οὐροβόρος ὄφις tail-devouring snake) is an ancient symbol depicting a serpent or dragon eating its own tail. The Ouroboros often symbolizes self-reflexivity or cyclicality, especially in the sense of something constantly re-creating itself, the eternal return, and other things such as the phoenix which operate in cycles that begin anew as soon as they end. It can also represent the idea of primordial unity related to something existing in or persisting from the beginning with such force or qualities it cannot be extinguished. While first emerging in Ancient Egypt, the Ouroboros has been important in religious and mythological symbolism, but has also been frequently used in alchemical illustrations, where it symbolizes the circular nature of the alchemist's opus. It is also often associated with Gnosticism, and Hermeticism."

This was part of a print-making assignment in class! I thought the Ouroboros symbol would be perfect for this project, since the symbol in itself represents re-creation and a stamp can be used repeatedly. While the stamp didn't come out as neatly as I had hoped due to all the little details being smeared out, I kind of like the grunge look it has.
For this project we used speedball speedy carve blocks as our base, then carved out are image using an x-acto blade or a Speedball Linoleum Cutter. After we finished, we rolled on acrylic paint onto the stamp to make a good print. After I had one I was satisfied with, I took a photo of it with an Ipad, then took it into the Wishboard application to make the different patterns after cropping and fiddling with the colors in Photoshop Express.

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