CNC-machine pen and ink drawing

"Girls and Cat" click image for enlargement

This is a pen and ink drawing (black rolling writer on BFK) made by CNC Machine. The pen paths followed the contours of the gray areas of the digital image used as a 'map'. The first contours drawn were those which were the darkest tones in the image. The pen more or less follows the outer contours, spiraling inward about 30 lines per inch. Then the contours of the two darkest tones toghther, then the three darkest tones, and so on until the contours of all non-white tones were drawn last.

Here's a detail of the cat's face:

detail -- click for enlargement)

The lines do an interesting job of approximating the gray-tones of the original image and leave those complex criss-crossed curvy contours on the paper which I think are very beautiful!

The drawing took about 8 hours to complete at about three inches per second -- over a mile of line on this 14 x 14 inch drawing!

CNC-machined Sarah mezzotint

click image to pop-up enlargement

The copper plate for this mezzotint was entirely produced by CNC machine holding two conventional EC Lyons tools -- a diamond-tipped dry-point graver which was used to scribe a series of parallel lines at 50 lines per inch over the entire plate, then another set of lines at a 15 degree angle to the first set, and so on through 180 degrees.

Then a small ball-end burnisher was used to burnish out the highlights in about 13 steps...

First the machine followed the contour of all non-black areas, then all but the two darkest areas, then all but the three darkest areas, and so on until the final pass burnished only the lightest areas.

The plate was then inked, wiped, and printed as usual with intaglios.

CNC machined drypoint and mezzotint

This is "Mia", printed on tan Rives BFK paper from an 18x12 inch copper plate.

The copper was drypointed and burnished entirely by my CNC machine, following paths I generated from my digital image and using EC Lyons conventional tools fixed in a special jig I made for the machine.

The plate was held flat during machining by a simple vacuum plenum powered by a shop-vac!

email Mike Lyon

Hanga Class

Hi all, I've had some troubles posting a message about some recent activity (that in the past might be on the Baren Show n' Tell page) so this blog has come at an opportune time. If you go to my website, http://www.ralene.com/gallery/Doings/do.html you find some pictures of me at an art fair, but more importantly, if you scroll down, pictures of an April Vollmer hanga class at our local community college in Santa Cruz, CA, at which I helped out. The class of 13 ran an entire week and each student was able to produce a small edition (my own print is the last picture). Also, I had two prints (non-moku-hanga) selected for the New Mexico Printmakers show, Hand Prints, at the University of New Mexico-Los Alamos (you can see the entire show at http://www.newmexicoprintmakers.com/handprints.html and my two prints (one a silkscreen, one a reduction woodcut) are viewable at http://www.newmexicoprintmakers.com/images/Hand%20Prints/33.JPG. Take care all. frank