Creating Sugar Mice Rubber Block

Back in July, I shared a blog post on my Sugar Mice rubber print.  I've been experimenting with using free (and amazing) vector software Inkscape to create designs which can be cut on a laser cutter and then printed with inks.  It's been a fascinating way of developing my skills and a new way of interpreting single colour images, reducing them down to the necessary, simplest details.  It's a great intellectual challenge, creating the perfect balance of negative space and coloured blocks and detailed areas.

I was asked how I created this rubber print - so I've decided to share the different steps for any other printmakers who wish to experiment.  I've taken screenshots of each stage.  As you can see, I start by scanning in and opening a JPEG of my initial drawn idea.  You can see my initial vision here, but I changed the eyes in the end.

If you do not know how to use Inkscape, I highly recommend the tutorials by Logos by Nick - I bought his reasonably priced tutorial package, or just watch his individual tutorials on YouTube.  Then I create a circle over that using the circle tool and going to Path, Object to Path.  I use the Edit Paths by Node tool to select the nodes and make them into corner nodes.  I create a shape based on my drawing, making additional nodes as I need.  I keep the shape as smooth and as simple as possible.

You can see here my design - I knew I wanted to print it roughly postcard size and for the inks to be pink.  The mice matched up well facing opposite directions and at a slight angle.

Once I finalised my design, I had to build up the layers to translate it for the laser cutter.  You have to think about it as an inverted black and white image.  White will be the raised surface of your rubber print.  So here, I created the background in white.  I knew I'd need to cut the rectangle out.  To cut things, you have to do a stroke around it at 0.001 pt in red (255).  You can see this above.

Next are my mice.  They are going to be the rasterised layer - that is, the top surface of the rubber is going to be burnt out by the laser cutter.  To 'tell' the laser cutter which parts to burn, you have to colour these areas in black.  You can see my mice in black above.

However, it is much quicker if you just need to rasterise small areas - plus, if you are rasterising rubber, it is so smelly!  The less rasterising of rubber the better!  To do this, you need to identify which bits you can cut out.  You can see, I created a shape in white for each of the mice where I could cut out the excess rubber.  Again, because this shape is being cut out, you have to put a red stroke around the cut area of red at 0.001pt at 255.

When a stroke line is that thin, you can no longer see it in Inkscape.  However, to finish your 'translation' of your design for the laser cutter, you save it as a PDF.  When you open it in Acrobat Reader, you can see the red lines.  

It is really important that you check your design in Acrobat.  When you are dealing with different layers with strokes you can see, it can get very confusing!  The photo below of the block makes it clearer which areas stand proud, which have been rasterised out, and which have been cut out.  It's helpful to mount the rubber print on a piece of matboard, it keeps it stable in the press.

Hopefully this post will help other printmakers understand how to approach making a printing block by laser cutting rubber.  They are really fun, and your abilities extend each time you create a new one.  Here's a film of my printing up my mice in pink.  They are great little cards to send to people!