Rain Soaked Mountains

I'm so close to finishing the first key block for the first page in the Book of Life I can almost taste it! I'm frustrated with my camera as a took full shots of the block and the auto focus was just not kicking in. The resulting images were just blurry. I settled for this close up. At least the new carving came out in the shot. Pretty much everything is done for this key block except the border. I remeasured the borders with calipers because I want to stay as close as possible to my original perimeters.
I decided that rather than draw teeny tiny water molecules around the border (the creep of the graphite transfer paper wouldn't catch all the detail anyway with any accuracy) I would cut out a rubber stamp and stamp the designs where I needed them. All the best laid plans, right? Yeah, number one, in an effort to quit obsessing and start doing I settled with this molecule design to begin with. Number two, the rubber will hold no more detail at the current size and I don't feel like burning out my retinas to create a smaller stamp and THEN have to do it fifty MORE times in the wood. My goal is to finish carving this coming weekend and to at least pull a proof. Since the original design felt hackneyed anyway I'm ditching it and am going to try to find something else. I know that the pattern will stay the same. What ever design I choose to make will still compact over the mountains and expand over the sun and sea in representation of water's changing states. I DID make my first attempt to change the bamboo sheath on my baren. That's another story for another day.......