SignManiac
New Member
Quite often I get calls from clients with these strange jobs that everyone else turns down, I'm a glutton for punishment I guess. This client asked me to make dimensional carved replicas of her original hand carved wood blocks. There were nine total and each one measures 9"w. x 12"h.
These had to be outdoor durable for display in a free standing shrine box outside of a museum. Each one a different native species plant design. I decided to do them in 1/2" black PVC using a paint mask over the black so that we would not have to paint all of the details in the design, then I had the image laser carved through the paint mask and into the material. Once the background was burned out, we simply painted the background with a close paint color match to the cypress boxes they had made for the plaques to sit in.
The first picture is the original image of the artwork we had to work from. They were bitmap .jpg's and need to be converted to vector line art for the laser engraving.
The second photo is the finished result after the carving and painting. The third image is a shot of all nine designs, along with the shrine box set up on a galvanized pipe that these were installed in. The pieces are very small and the artwork details even smaller. Looks like a simple job, but in actuality, it was more work then even I was expecting. That's what happens when you challenge yourself with the unknown. But believe you me, you sure do learn a lot in the process.
These had to be outdoor durable for display in a free standing shrine box outside of a museum. Each one a different native species plant design. I decided to do them in 1/2" black PVC using a paint mask over the black so that we would not have to paint all of the details in the design, then I had the image laser carved through the paint mask and into the material. Once the background was burned out, we simply painted the background with a close paint color match to the cypress boxes they had made for the plaques to sit in.
The first picture is the original image of the artwork we had to work from. They were bitmap .jpg's and need to be converted to vector line art for the laser engraving.
The second photo is the finished result after the carving and painting. The third image is a shot of all nine designs, along with the shrine box set up on a galvanized pipe that these were installed in. The pieces are very small and the artwork details even smaller. Looks like a simple job, but in actuality, it was more work then even I was expecting. That's what happens when you challenge yourself with the unknown. But believe you me, you sure do learn a lot in the process.
