How To: Carve a tiger design pottery seal

Henry Li from Blue Heron Arts shows how to carve a tiger design stamp onto a pottery seal for use with Chinese seal engraving. This technique shows how a pottery seal can be made without having to use a kiln. You will need a pen, pencil, marker, charcoal, knives, and soapstone. The first thing that needs to be done is to create a design. In this tutorial, Li uses a Hahn Dynasty tiger design, which must be flipped by using the computer. The charcoal is then used to duplicate the image onto the stone seal. Once the image is transferred, the marker can be used to fill in the white space and darken it. You can then use this darkened image as a guide to carve the image into the stone. Once the image is fully carved, dip the seal into a stamp pad to test out your new seal. Sandpaper can be used to round the edges of the seal.