Dalton Ghetti carves tiny minature sculptures into the graphite of a pencil.
” At school Dalton always sharpened pencils by hand, and would sometimes peel the paint from the pencil and carve intricate designs into the wood. He noticed that a good blade cuts through both the wood and through the graphite, leaving behind a nice flat and shiny surface. He began working on them until they were perfectly round and cone shaped, then removed more wood as the graphite started to become part of the carvings. He had found the perfect material for his miniature sculptures.
The tools he uses are very simple: a strong light source, razor blades, a sewing needle sharpened to a fine chisel and an assortment of tools made out of jewelers and dentists implements plus sand paper and sharpening stones. These tools need to be constantly sharpened to make the perfect cut”
Those little sculptures are amazing!
This is so cool — it reminds me of those tiny etchings on rice grains! Once when I was in primary school we were set an assignment to create the smallest sculpture we could. After struggling for a long time my mum and I managed to create a knot of black thread with eight “legs”. With a tiny dab of red nail polish it became a redback spider. My classmate Michelle (whose surname I have forgotten) made a doll out of a piece of white pencil lead, dressing it in tiny scraps of fabric. She won the prize. (I have always felt that I wuz robbed: my spider was smaller in volume though the diameter of the legs was bigger!) I am just glad Dalton Ghetti wasn’t in my class.