Corrina Spurlin: Week 11 Skateboard Engraving

Illustrator Design

Engraved Board

Close-Up of Engraving

Attempt with graphite

Concept
The concept for my skateboard design largely played off of the visuals that came from my 3D Printed Model. I wanted to continue the rose-like theme, while upholding a rigid and geometric aspect to it as well. I wanted to contrast from my 3D model, however, in that the design would appear generally intricate and compact, instead of simple and open. 

Technique
The main techniques utilized in this assignment were the line tool and pathfinder in Illustrator. I also used the rotate tool to create the radial flower designs that sit between the diamonds. Pathfinder was used to crop an inverted version of that design so that it could appear again, just in a different form. 

The file was setup to match the board as closely and accurately as I believed possible, but when it came time to engrave, problems arose and the engraving ended up being off-centered on both axes. 

Materials
The materials used within this project were the skateboard deck, and use of the program Adobe Illustrator. 

The material of the board created an issue for me when it came time to actually engrave, as it had an outer non-wood protective layer that caused the engraving to look different than I would have preferred. The laser had to do more work to get through to the wood, so when it did it was weaker and didn't appear dark. I plan to engrave my design again in the future with a board that either does not have a protective layer, or one that will be easy to sand down off the wood. That way the final product will look much darker (and as close to black as possible without any of the design).

It was recommended to me that graphite or charcoal could be used to fill in the design to make it appear darker, so I tried to mark graphite onto one of the small diamonds to test this theory. As it can be seen in the final picture in the series, this caused the raised layer to look darkened, after wiping off excess, instead of the engraved level. 

EDIT:
I attempted to re-engrave my design with a slightly different material wood that I additionally sanded prior to the laser engraving. The result was far better than my first attempt.