This post is about my first foray into printing laser cut printmaking plates.
In Part 1 I have included some generic technical information about using a laser cutter to produce intaglio and relief printing plates.
Part 2 is about my own experience of making and printing laser cut plates as prints as part of the ‘Eves’ footprint’ series.
If you put ‘laser cutter’ and ‘printmaking’ into a search engine you get a lot of results that are not quite what we want here, so I have added links to places I found particularly relevant – I hope these will be helpful.
From inky fingers to digital production
It is important to me that my prints are hand-made and unique, celebrating the lively signs of hands-on physical work, warts and all. There is a spectrum from this traditional ‘inky fingers’ position all the way to a totally digitally produced print, which may not have come near an inky finger at all. Discussions about where a printmaker situates themselves along this spectrum can get quite heated. The interface between more intellectual digital printmaking processes and physical ones, which involve blood sweat and tears, is an interesting and evolving place to explore!
Part 1: Technical preparation for laser cut printing plates
Laser cutters are brilliant versatile tools with so many potential areas of use. To begin at the beginning the makerspace network produces really good clear information about how laser cutters work and how to use them.
First convert your original image into vector file
The first stage in getting your own laser cut printing plate is to create a design and convert this into a computer file suitable for a laser cutter to read. For the plate I used in this example I produced a black and white jpeg image and the laser cutter technician converted it to a vector file. There are various programmes that will do this; most people use Adobe Illustrator, but there are also some free alternatives to use if you don’t have the Illustrator software.
Then find a laser cutter to produce your printing plate
Most schools and colleges have laser cutters and may be happy to help you with your plate. If you have a local makerspace workshop that is also a great place to start. Alternatively there are lots of commercial laser cutting services offering good value as well as technical advice.
Relief or intaglio?
Relief printing plates
Many examples of laser cut printing plates on-line are relief prints, as the process really lends itself to relief printing, as it is relatively straight forward to cut letter forms, shapes and engravings to print in relief. It is a whole lot easier to print than intaglio, as you will roll ink over the plate and it will only go on the top surface. The texture of the lower cut away surface is not relevant for relief printing. People have made relief laser cut plates from wood, card, acetate, and even lino.
Intaglio printing plates
Laser cut intaglio plates have different considerations, and need more careful preparation. If your image consists only of narrow lines like my footprint one, or is made up of fine lettering the grooves cut by the laser cutter will fill with intaglio ink and print quite dark, while the smooth surface will wipe clean of ink and print as white. These plates will also print well in relief, or even both intaglio and relief at the same time.
But if your design has larger cut away areas which you want to print dark, the surface the laser cutter creates will not be rough enough to hold the intaglio ink. This will print a bit like ‘open bite’ on a conventional etching i.e. not really dark, so your intaglio print will lack a rich variety of tone.
To produce a range of tones for intaglio inking the design must include halftones with a dot screen effect. This means there are a a variety of surface textures which hold different amounts of ink.
Part 2: making and printing laser cut plates
Creating the original foot print image
This experiment began with no plan whatsoever! It is part of my ‘Eves footprint’ series, which I described in the previous post.
The image I started with was a print directly from the sole of my foot. After some messy experiments with acrylic paint, I graduated onto very thin layer of oil-based ink rolled onto an acetate. I gently pressed my foot onto this and then put my foot on to smooth paper, not pressing too hard.
This meant all the texture of the skin whorls showed up – if you use too much ink or press with all your weight you don’t get the detail.
Getting the original image onto a printing plate
I enlarged the original image in photoshop so the ball of the foot fitted onto A3 size paper.
I had no plan – I just knew I liked the image and so started to work out how I could get it onto a printing plate.
Choosing a platemaking technique
Tracing it by hand was very slow and laborious, and didnt really capture the quality of the lines. I only got this far before giving up!
To find a photographic way of creating a plate from the enlarged foot-sole image I tried it by laser copying the image on a pronto plate (polyester lithography)
Zinc etching
And then wanting a more robust plate I tried transferring the laser printed image onto a zinc plate with acetone and then etching it. Rubbing the back of an all over a4 design was hard work, but results were quite good. This plate worked in relief and intaglio, but was still only A4 size.
Laser cutting
Ever since I talked to some students at the local art college who had used laser cutters to make intaglio plates from acrylic sheets, I wanted to have a go at it. But I was working to a tight deadline and the students were on their summer break.
I spoke to a few commercial laser cutting services, but felt this was a leap in the dark and I wanted someone who had more understanding of printmaking plates. Fortune was on my side when a chance comment to my niece revealed that she had the very interesting job of DT technician in a school and was responsible for all sorts of machines and had access to the art and DT dept while the pupils were on holiday….
Making the laser cut plate
Feeling slightly dubious about the high-tech digital aspect of using a laser cutter to make plates in case the end product looked a bit mechanical, I decided to give it a go. I felt confident that as the original image was a mono print by me, I was just using technology to extend my printmaking.
Having sent my black and white foot print image off to be adapted for a laser cutter and ordered a couple of sheets of A3 clear Perspex, I waited expectantly for the results. I decided on two plates, one the same as my original image and one reversed, in order to be able to combine and overprint them in different ways.
Printing the laser cut plate
So exciting – the translucent image held up in the sun was beautiful. The smooth shiny surface with delicate cut lines was a work of art in itself.
This photo was after printing the plate so the colour of the ink is still showing.
Intaglio inking
I began with intaglio inking, using Hawthorns stay open inks. This proved a bit tricky; the smooth surface was difficult to wipe clear of ink. It kept smearing, adjusting the viscosity of the ink by adding some oil helped.
I used damp 220gsm printmaking paper. The first intaglio print was promising.
Then a relief print.
So quick, so clear! I wiped most of the ink off the smooth area around the cut out as it seemed difficult to get a good even film of ink on this, (no doubt due to the added oil in the ink).
The nature of the design, with lots of concentric lines meant that the intaglio version looked pretty similar to the relief one, which took a whole lot longer to ink up.
Combining intaglio and relief inking
For this one I inked the plate as intaglio, and the rolled a layer of relief ink over it.
You can see the effect of larger areas cut away on the second toe; they don’t hold the intaglio ink, so it wipes off leaving indeterminate tones.
Overprinting
For this one the plate was inked up as intaglio, (siena) then rolled as a relief (umber) and printed on paper.
I then overprinted it with an intaglio print in light ink. At this stage I added a dusting of mica to make the light ink more ethereal.
Transparent acrylic plates mean you can test out different backgrounds.
Here is the inked up plate laid over a rust printed base layer, this is also a great way to plan where to add chine collee into the print.
Considering ‘why’ and ‘how’ of digital processes in creating hand-made prints
Getting a laser cut plate made was a first for me. It was a journey of exploration, and with hindsight I now know I was lucky to hit on a design that worked really well for printing in both relief and intaglio. This provided different possibilities for printing the plate, which meant the actual inking up and printing process was integral to the finished print, and that I was not simply reproducing a digital image in print form.
It has made me think more widely about using digital processes as part of developing printing plates. If a printmaker has a particular idea in mind and a digital process is the best way to execute this, it feels that you are in control of the process and it is serving your creative purpose. I think it is important to guard against the opposite happening; when the digital processes run away with you, offering ‘quick wins’ and potentially distancing you from expressing your own unique lived experience and creative vision.
Your thoughts are welcome
It would be very good to hear from others who have explored working with laser cut printing plates, and what the results were. And also, what your thoughts are on the limitations, possibilities and (self-imposed) boundaries of incorporating digital processes in ‘hand-made’ prints.
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9 thoughts on “Laser cut printmaking plates”
Thank you for this post, Emily Harvey.
I made laser-cut plates for intaglio printmaking last year, with much help from the library technician. I enjoyed both the process and the results but I am suprised you had success with Perspex.
We tried it and encountered warping. With cardboard we had another problem, I forget what. Finally we used acrylic tiles and that worked well. I’m always curious about what you’ll do next! Greetings.
Thanks for your comment Michele – it sounds as if there is a lot of room for experimentation with materials here!
Very interesting post! I use digital methods on photos (Affinity) in the process of making intaglio photopolymer plates. Then I print them traditionally. Your worry about using digital methods is something I’ve thought about too. For me, having developed my own variant of making plates is very satisfying (after a number of workshops, reading, and help from others).
Using photographic sources means that patterns and textures that exist in the real world also exist in the final print (these take more skill than I have to reproduce manually in a believable way). The lines in your footprint are a perfect example. It’s hard to create the right amount of randomness in this sort of thing.
Working digitally means I have the freedom to combine images and manipulate them without losing their character. I do feel like the physical process of making the final print is essential.
yes – I like your point about physically making the actual print, but taking careful decisions about the digital development of the image leading up to the messy inky part!
I very much enjoyed this, the image is intriguing I love the layers you have built up ….thanks Emily
Very interesting article thanks, and a great stimulus to experimentation. I also had a fascination with the idea of a blown-up fingerprint print though ended up doing it as a semi-simplified drypoint because I could otherwise just see the remaining days of my life flashing by whilst I made the plate!
Lovely work !!
PS BRAVE YOU! (by inviting website comments I mean). Back in the old days when I did more website hosting I eventually decided that comments were a great idea but a frequently rather terrible reality… though I am now more open to persuasion that I might have been wrong. Tell me (when you have time) how they work for you as I know of a few organisations that I think would appreciate some encouragement to do more of this?
PPS I always rather liked creating HTML forms with the play of option buttons, checkboxes and text fields.
I have a modest publishing project ( eyeglassbooks.com ) and co-run a printmaking workshop ( wivenhoeprint.works ) in the Colchester area.
I like what you do
JW
Hi John, thanks for your contributions, I spent time living in Colchester and Mersea Island too – it is good to know you have a local printmaking workshop in the area.
Re you question about comments – I love getting comments, life would be empty without them! Apart from occasional spam which I filter out, 99% are positive, intelligent and interesting and I hope add another element to the website for readers/printmakers.
Hi Emily! Thanks for this. A few years ago I had 8 wood plates laser cut. The uncut birch board was 1/4”, the cut probably 1/32”. I printed them in relief, layering two, sometimes three plates into one image. I found I wished the cuts could be deeper as I found, even when I rolled the ink very carefully, that I would end up with “noise” in the open areas. (I had not used a dot matrix and had not intended to print intaglio as well).
How thick was your Perspex? I’m impressed you were able to achieve such a beautiful print!
As for the philosophical question….i love hand printed and inky fingers as well. However, many of my images originate as photographs I’ve taken that I then manipulate and transfer back to an analog process. I’m using the technology in service to my vision and expression. Thanks again!
Thanks for this Ria – and for the lovely image of your print. Interesting about the depth of cut in birch ply – the perspex I used was 3mm and the cut was very shallow. I think the image having lots of lines close together meant that this worked. It seems there are lots of variables to consider…