Laser Cutting Cat Woodcut

Lasercutting woodcuts is an area of printmaking I've been experimenting with.  Recently, I created this cat design - the look I was going for was comic book style with a 50s feel - and I wanted a really sassy cat!  I feel I met my own brief!  You can see above some of the steps I went through to create the final design, working out the final details.  Like an single colour image, it helps to have a good balance of blank areas (the white cat); solid areas (the house); and detailed/textured areas (the background).  

As ever, it starts with trying to get my initial idea out my head and onto paper.  I sketched lots of different cats over and over again, to try to pinpoint the pose and expression I wanted.  We are a family of dog owners, so I am somewhat unfamiliar with cats.  Patterdale terriers make any relationship with a C-A-T impossible (we refer to them as C-A-Ts as Ted the terrier goes bananas when you say the word in full).  I watched lots of videos of British Shorthaired cats for research, and I found them utterly charming.  Their faces were a little too blunt for the look I was going for, but I really enjoyed sketching them.

You can see above my final drawing and design.  As I have written about previously, I have invested in a Samsung Galaxy tablet.  I find its scribe tool, which is included, very smooth and comfortable to draw with.  I used it to draw my cat, using a brush from Retro Supply.  Their 'ramen brush' is great at capturing a sense of movement.  I also used Retro Supply's half tone dots and hatch lines for the background.

The final image was created in Adobe Elements.  From this point, you have to translate it so it could be 'read' by the lasercutter.  This involves flipping it horizontally so it is suitable for printing from.  I have to invert the image so the blacks and whites are swapped.  Then I have to save it as a JPEG and import it into Inkscape.  I have to resize it, and create extra layers in Inkscape in order to create cuts to remove excess wood and then cut it out as a square.

Now for the fun part - printing it!  I printed it in black ink.  The woodcut is created from ash, grown here in Scotland, cut as a veneer by Sawn Constructional Veneers.  This was brilliant for the half tone dots.  Previously I have used plywood for woodcuts, and eventually the dots come away.  Ash is a hard wood, and is very durable, so it can withstand the pressure of the press and the detail is not destroyed by the heat of the laser cutter.  The grain of the wood is very obvious on the black house, but I really like this effect.  So there you have it - a woodcut printed cat, 50s comic book style!