Drawn with a Korn's lithography crayon (water soluble)
PRINT
I drew on linoleum and carved a bit for a twenty minute pose. I drew with a water soluble lithography pencil (Korns) to get a thicker line:
I started carving during the pose --
NFT
I made my first NFT, posting it on OpenSea, and it was free using Polygon (using a MetaMask crypto wallet that deals with Ethereum):
Portable Laser Cutter
I ordered a portable laser cutter from Amazon -- Laserpecker 2 -- and laser engraved one of my prints into linoleum at Quelab on May 11th.
My portable laser cutter arrived --
Unpacking
The 6x6 inch linoleum square
was too big for the 100x100 mm surface
- It would be nice to get the "power bank" battery and the carrying bags accessories
Laser cutting in action
It took only 20 minutes to engrave
one of my print images,
100x100 mm into a 6x6 inch linoleum square
(Settings: Wood, 10 depth)
The next day Henry Morales printed this Laserpecker2 carved linoleum on the Tortilla Press at the drawing session -- and it printed! I thought that the engraving was too shallow and would print completely black, after the ink filled up all the gullies. Henry only lightly inked the linocut with the brayer...maybe this would work better for letterpress.
The shallow engraving
still printed!
- Note also that Takach Press sells 4 x 6 pieces of unmounted linoleum
I experimented some more with the LaserPecker 2 on May 14th, cutting linoleum and newsprint:
I think we can make prints with images that have been altered by AI (artificial intelligence) by laser engraving the image into linoleum:
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Images created with AI
Cutting linoleum smoked out the small sewing room at Quelab, so linoleum should be cut with better ventilation, like outside. Were we to repeat the cut, one or two more times, it might be deep enough to ink up and make a relief print -- this looks promising.
Laser Engraved Linoleum
Printed with a Skateboard Press
Now we just have to make a
laser cut linoleum print
with the Skateboard Press
that Robert made at Quelab
Update (May 15): Ethan made a laser engraved print with the Skateboard Press in front of the Quelab table at the Sunday Rail Yard market on May 15th.
Ethan printing with the Skateboard Press
It worked! The final print!
More In Depth
While we might eventually be able to laser cut linoleum deep enough to make relief prints, this would take too long to do at a street fair. It might be faster if we converted the image into a vector SVG format, we will have to experiment. The most we can expect at this point is to singe the linoleum to leave an image on the linoleum, and then hand carve the linoleum square.
The maxium engraving area of the Laserpecker 2 is about 4x4 inches (or 4x80 inches when mounted on wheels) -- at 110 mm height. However Adric suggested that if we engrave at a longer distance, we could singe the whole 6x6 inch linoleum. The cutting would be out-of-focus, and the image would be fuzzy, but this could even be an advantage when hand carving the linoleum afterwards.
We can always use the big laser cutter at Quelab to engrave linoleum deep enough to make relief prints. That raster cutting usually takes about an hour per 6x6 linoleum square.
Note: We can also laser cut shapes out of newsprint to make silk screen prints, masking out areas on the screen. I believe we can do this quickly and on the spot.
Other cheaper laser cutters/engravers:
OTHER
There is an article about Robin
discussing Shakespeare
in the 3rd issue of Santa Fe Magazine
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