Family Of Elephants Carved Into A Pencil

Cindy Chinn blew up the internet back in December with her incredibly detailed miniature train carved into a pencil. Seven months have passed since then and apparently she's been very busy.

Her latest piece is the most intricate of her designs yet: "The Elephant Walk, commissioned by the Epiphany Elephant Museum. The design started out simple, an Elephant with a foil stamped logo. Then I got carried away..." Cindy told Bored Panda. "After looking at a reference I decided that I needed to carve a family of elephants walking across the Serengeti because carving just one elephant wasn't challenging enough!"

"I carved the train using a 5x diopter magnifying lamp. Then I bought a 10x diopter floor lamp. Still feeling like I could get more detail, I bought a 90x Trinocular on an arm, which is basically a microscope that can be setup for a long field of working distance. I would never have been able to get the detail that I was able to get in the elephant's skin or the baby's trunk, which was REALLY crazy hard to carve without breaking... I found myself holding my breath a lot."

More info: etsy | cindychinn.com | facebook (h/t: boredpanda)

Using the wood of a pencil I carved the tree tops, and the trunks are made from the graphite lead

I scored the wood of the pencil to create the look of grass

I carved the elephants from different pencils

I start with a carpenter pencil, adding rough grid lines for reference

I rough the basic shape out using my magnifying lamp

Sometimes I also make some of my own tools because I can't always find points that are small enough

I complete the elephant with skin texture

My work station complete with a magnifying lamp and a trinocular

I have also carved other tiny things, like this graphite mitt

Inside art

The beast

A day at the beach

For more miniature awesomeness by Cindy Chinn, head over here.