Scotland is a wonderful place to see nature - and when I was up in Aberfeldy in August this summer, I was treated to the sight of house martins swooping and swirling after insects. They are similar to swallows in terms of shape, but are smaller, and do not have a red throat - rather, they have a beautiful, green black plumage.
I was immediately inspired to create a piece of artwork of these lovely birds. I have been experimenting lots with laser cutting at the fantastic Famous Grouse Ideas Centre here in Perth. In order to create anything using a laser cutter, you have to create your idea first on vector software - I use the free software Inkscape. Inkscape allows you to 'draw' using shapes. You can see the outline of the head of one of my house martins above.
At the Famous Grouse Ideas Centre, we have been experimenting with cutting things out of mountboard (also known as matboard). This worked really well with the house martin design - it was even possible to cut out the eye. Mountboard is surprisingly durable. I then painted it using a stencil brush and acrylic paint - this created an interesting stippled texture.
You can see the same design cut from wood veneer. I source this wonderful wood veneer from Sawn Constructional Veneers up in Brora here in Scotland. The first time I cut this design, I made the upper part of the outline of the body of the bird too thin, and this resulted in it snapping, so I had to thicken it up. When you laser cut, you sometimes need to adapt your design according to the material you are using. However, once I had resolved this issue, I was really pleased with it. I painted the wood with wood stains - first in white, and then in a light blue. Wood stains tint the wood, while still allowing the grain to be visible. I was really delighted with the final version of my laser cut house martins, both in mountboard (matboard) and veneer.