This blog post describes the process I went through to create these lovely dove prints from laser cutting rubber. It is a technique I am learning more about each time I do it. I wrote in a previous blog post that I did not think my woodcut version of two turtle doves worked and promised to share the much more successful rubber cut version.
You can see here my original hand drawn design and the transformation it went through in Inkscape, the free vector software I use to prepare my files for laser cutting. The white areas remain raised, and the black areas are rasterised ie lowered, so they are not printed. This is the same as gouging out areas of a linocut. Although you cannot see them, there are also red lines around the inner parts of the dove's head, chest and wings. This instructs the laser cutter to cut out those areas.
This photo shows clearly shows these raised areas of the rubber laser cut being inked up, while the rasterised areas remain clean of ink. The reason I do not cut them out but prefer to rasterise them is it holds the detail of the design, and the finished block is stronger. However, I remove the centre areas of any large blank areas as these would get covered in ink if I left them in. The ink would accidentally transfer from the roller onto these larger areas.
You can see a selection of the final prints above. It is great fun experimenting with different colours on different papers. The opaque pink ink on grey paper looks completely different to the black ink on white paper. I also created a larger scale rubber block and a smaller one - again, this completely changes the appearance of the print. I really like both of them. I have been using the different colour combinations for different purposes. The pink on grey have been perfect for wedding or engagement occasions. The black on white have been used to send to people who have been bereaved. I think this is testament to the power of colour and design - that the same image can have such different purposes, depending on the way it has been rendered.
