I cut designs with some fine details, which I thought, even as I was watching it engrave, would melt away, but when I stamped them, even the little dots showed up. Next time I’ll add a shoulder on those bits.
These were stamped with acrylic paint that I applied to the stamp with a brayer.
I use an iPad app called iOrnament to make symmetric designs and repeating patterns. It has all the planar symmetry groups; you choose how you want the repeats and doodle away. I draw in black and white, and then export the image into illustrator, where I use the image trace feature to make it into a vector image. I have this $7 pro version, but there’s a $4 version that has many of the features.
One thing the app does is to let you project your design onto a sphere. I did a 3-D engrave from this design:
Loving your stamp experiments! The detail you’re getting is so lovely.
Since you’re using both Illustrator and an iPad already have you checked out the new Illustrator for iPad app? It has a fairly robust symmetry/array function I think you might like.
The 3D engrave, of this design at least, has a curved surface, so the masking burns off entirely in most places, but where it stays on, the resulting wood looks really white, in contrast with the dirtier-impossible-to-completely clear lower layers.
Ah, right, it’s shaded not strictly black and white. In general I don’t mask that sort of thing. I like to use maple hardwood for this kind of engrave but some people swear by basswood.
I don’t know much about wood (yet). I just ordered some 1/8" birch plywood someone recommended. I picked it because it’s pretty white, so the colors will look nice on it. But with the not too rough scrubbing I did on that disk, I broke off a little bit of the draft board, so I’m thinking that’s not really the right thing.
Adobe Capture… I’ll see if I have that one. I have a whole slew of Adobe products from work, but not the iPad Illustrator app. I haven’t used Capture before; thanks, I’ll check it out.
gorgeous work! and for those of us who don’t know what brayer is, “A brayer is a hand-tool used historically in printing and printmaking to break up and “rub out” ink before it was “beaten” using inking balls or composition rollers. The word is derived from the verb to “bray”, meaning “to break, pound, or grind small, as in a mortar”. A brayer consists of a short wooden cylinder with a handle fitted to one end; the other, flat end is used to rub the ink.”
gorgeous work! and for those of us who don’t know what brayer is, “A brayer is a hand-tool used historically in printing and printmaking to break up and “rub out” ink before it was “beaten” using inking balls or composition rollers. The word is derived from the verb to “bray”, meaning “to break, pound, or grind small, as in a mortar”. A brayer consists of a short wooden cylinder with a handle fitted to one end; the other, flat end is used to rub the ink.”
I downloaded the iornament app and I’m amazed and the creations. I can’t load them directly into GF software because it’s just one big blab and it doesn’t allow me to engrave. I don’t understand vector etc so pardon my ignorance but is there a free iPad app I can use to convert the designs?
