Next level pencil carvings ! Part 2
Yesterday we looked at the work of Russian pencil artist Salavat Fidai. (Click here to revisit this post.)
As I started to research this intricate work, I discovered that there are a number of artists around the world sculpting pencils! Fascinating!
One such artist is Dalton Ghetti, a Brazilian native who now lives in Bridgeport, Connecticut in the USA. He was given a set of sculpting tools for his 9th birthday, and this inspired him to take up carpentry as a profession. He does his carving as a hobby, recycling old pencils he finds lying around.
Nevertheless, he has inspired others to give it a go too through his exhibitions and incredible designs, all carved with just the naked eye, not even using a microscope!
Here are some examples of his work (1.15 minutes):
(I think Dalton is Brazilian, not Hungarian as noted in this video title).....
He says that it takes time to understand the character of the pencil core depending on its make up.
Most pencils these days are a mixture of graphite and clay filler. You may be familiar with pencils such as HB or 2H or 3B etc, but do you know what it all means??
H pencils contain more clay filler and are highly compacted which means they create a lighter mark on paper and are harder. The higher the number before the H, the harder and lighter it will be. B pencils have less clay filler and the core isn’t as compacted which makes them darker and softer. The higher the number before the B, the softer and darker it will be. So, the grading numbers from go from 9H, 8H, 7H, 6H, 5H, 4H, 3H, 2H, H, F, HB, B, 2B, 3B, 4B, 5B, 6B, 7B, 8B, 9B, and even EE which is 50% graphite and 50% charcoal and is very dark!1
Interestingly, coloured pencils are actually oil or wax based, which creates a different carving surface yet again. Who knew !!?
Another such artist is Chien-Chu Lee in Vietnam. Have a look at his workshop in this 1.20 minute video:
Chien-Chu Lee carves both the graphite pencil part as well as sometimes, the wooden casing of the pencil! Would you have the patience to do this?
Another artist is Jasenko Đorđević in Bosnia, who was interviewed by My Modern Met:
Arnesia Young
Cindy Chin is also involved in this medium and who was interviewed by the blog “Bored Panda” for her tiny train line carving, which you can see below:
Cindy Chinn
In this article, Cindy mentions The Annual Miniature Show! It turns out there are a number of Miniature shows and Associations around the world! As our blog writer Caro would say: “Another rabbit hole to go down!!”
It looks like many of these associations focus on tiny dollhouse furniture, which would be another interesting subject to delve into! We’ll put it on the list!! In the meantime, I have put the link to the American Show dates in footnote 2 below for those nearby who might be interested. There are also Australian Associations in Perth and Melbourne, I’ve put the links in footnote 3 below. You might wish to search for others that might exist near you, if you are interested in miniatures as an art form!
But today we leave you with a very short video of intricate pencil carvings in the wood (the casing) of the pencil. As far as I can work out, these are not actual carvings done by hand, but rather images generated by an artificial intelligence program!
They were apparently made by an independent research lab called Midjourney, Inc, based in San Fransisco. Founded in 2022, it is an image generation platform which generates images from natural language descriptions, called prompts. It is used by artists, architects and the advertising industry to generate artistic concepts to show to clients before starting work themselves. 4
My understanding is sketchy, but there is no doubt that the world of AI is developing at an incredible rate ......
Footnotes
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With thanks to Mont Marte.com/blogs
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Dates for the American Miniature Shows in 2024 can be found here.
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Links to the West Australian Miniature Association: click here and the Victorian Association: click here
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With thanks to Wikipedia