The Idea

 With a bag full of broken gourds, I came back from her mobile home in Yuma and was determined to revive my love of scrimshaw.

And it was not as easy as it looked...

I used to use a sharp tool, made of carborundum, as I recall, made for scratching metal for manufacturing.  It was in a pen shell, but hard and sharp. The original Scrimshanders used sharpened sail needles and spit and ash from the fireplace.  In the years intervening, I lost my scribe. I tried to buy some other sharp objects but I realized I was NOT going to be able to make the same marks.  It would appear the gourd, even old, hard and dry, was not going to keep scratches viable for inking. 

 Nothing stuck, 

Not in the scratch nor did it even seem to stain the surface.... so I tossed my old technique. 

It was however, lovely drawing on them for the initial sketch in pencil.

Very hard to see, but it is easy to pencil and easy to erase.  I found that printing the image about the same size and just sight sizing it was far easier than my initial attempt at transferring it, as I was doing with a lot of other crafts.

I collected my first images at the Phoenix Zoo so I had original subjects to put on my pieces.  BUT how....

My earlier pieces used tiny brushes. I had a small collection of them that I had been using in my previous career as a manicurist.  I was a bit well known as a manual muralist, as I called myself.  TINY brushes with image spread across the hand.  I had prizes in competition that were larger than even ME!  

A few of the saved images....

 My poor model literally lifted them off with nail polish remover and dental floss!!!

This was a practice piece homage to stamps!

Even at this scale, the detail was a bit lacking but it might work if I tried it in monochrome.....