Day 167 / Pencil Tip Sculpture

I’d been planning on trying this out for awhile now.  When I saw this post on the MAKE blog about an artist who sculpts things out of the graphite on the tip of a pencil I knew I had to try it out.  I read that he uses no magnification at all and his sculpting tools are a razor blade and a sewing needle.
 
Last night, I got home from work early and Jenny had plans to go out with the girls.  So, I found myself alone in the house with a lot of time on my hands, the perfect time to try this project out.  I grabbed a pencil, a razor and a sewing needle and I sat down and zoned in on this for an hour or two.
 
I didn’t expect to make anything beautiful of course.  I did expect that it would be a discovery process and it was.  It’s interesting that he uses no magnification because once I got this sculpture in front of the macro lens I realized that parts of it weren’t exactly what I expected.
 
There was a point though, while sculpting, that the pencil tip just fell into focus for me and I had no problem seeing what I was doing.  One weird effect that I was experiencing was that I saw the sculpture as one thing while using my left hand then I’d switch to my right hand and it suddenly looked different to me.  Weird brain trick maybe.
 
Anyways, I’d be willing to try this again.  It’s a very meditative and you find yourself breathing slower in order to get control of your wrist.  It’s fun also to make something so small and then see  it in the macro lens.