STEAMhouse: How I learnt to laser cut and made a Magnificent Monochromatic Creation

Something I recognised in my time at STEAMhouse so far is a natural tendency to alternate between an organised, systematic approach to making and a free flow organic mush method. I’ll let you in on an open secret, I’m a Gemini. Sometimes balancing the need for creative freedom with the need to follow a process is more of a seesaw than a scale.

You’ve heard the theory that you need to work on a skill for 10,000 hours to become an expert right? ¹

However, there is a caveat on the 10,000 hours. Each of the hours spent mastering a skill needs to be focused on taking an area of weakness and improving it.

What’s my point here?

I guess it’s that much of my creative time has been misspent on repeating the same mistakes! This is why I needed a structured programme like the Create Programme at STEAMhouse. Working with trustworthy people, expert technicians and being in a sea of creative energy makes it so much easier to see where to focus on improvements.

In spite of the breaks you can see in my test cut above, I felt genuine pride that:

1. This is the first totally solo mission where from paper design right through to cutting on the Flux Laser I’ve managed the whole process
2. There are only a few areas that need tweaking before re-cuts

It feels like the work is improving with each run and going in the direction I initially envisioned. Using the inlay method has been freeing. It’s a simple, respected method of slotting one colour into another without the need for complex offsets. The results could look very striking.

Now there are a few test cuts under my belt each new design tweak is getting easier to see. Honestly, it feels like a lifetime ago that I started sketching out dragons.

Using a more thorough approach has really helped to organise things. I set up a spreadsheet listing out the drawings with columns for whether they’d been digitalised, if they are cut or etch files and the file names. I’m recording the number of test cuts and the final version number.

For any artists out there wondering, is it worth learning Excel? YES! It is.

There are free resources out there to teach yourself Excel. For me, learning how to make basic spreadsheets to keep track of the art making process has been literally life-changing². I don’t have to keep looking through hundreds of phone photos to check which medium I’ve tested or try to remember what (usually illogical!) filename I chose at 2am.

There aren’t really any secrets to what I’m doing here, it’s more a hard slog

One of the problems I hit with this piece was laser burn. Ignoring the artistic license I’ve applied with the smoke, that yukky brown smoking on the acrylic is from an out of focus laser. The laser scold in this case was from a warp in the acrylic sheet (I’m using offcuts from signage). A tip shared with me, that I’ll let you in on here, is to focus the laser on multiple areas of the sheet. If it’s much higher on the left than the right for example (assuming your laser bed is flat) then the sheet has a warp.

The eagle eyed among you now know why I flipped the design from the sketch. The ‘right side’ was burned whereas the back still had the protective film on so remained a clean, bright white.

Creating work based on myths in a more contemporary way is really fun. The legend of Saint George and the Dragon has so much magic and darkness to mine. I want to celebrate the stories with this new bold medium.

What do you think of the black and white combinations? Let me know below or comment via Instagram.

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REFERENCE LINKS

^1. 10,000 hours to expertise theory from K. Anders Ericsson (Ericsson & Smith, 1991)

^2.I recommend the free support that comes with Microsoft Office to get the basics of Excel Microsoft Excel Support