Engraving memories with leaves as paper
🌿 The art of leaf sculpture is to use leaves as the paper, let the laser become the pen and ink, engraved with memories. With a thickness of 0.1 millimeter, it is possible to complete the dialogue between “natural life” and “craftsmanship”.
Today, we will disassemble the core technique of leaf engraving - the reverse color engraving process. We will take you to master the magic of carving time on leaves.
✂️ Three Steps to Leaf Engraving: The Transformation from Leaf to Artwork
🎯 Step 1: Select the leaves and make each leaf a unique canvas.
Prefer fallen leaves with thick and clear veins such as sycamore, ginkgo, etc.
(Veins are like a natural skeleton that supports the strength of the leaf when carving)
✔️ Note: Choose leaves that are dry but not brittle, and avoid insect holes and tears.
🎨 Step 2: Pattern design, reverse color processing
✔️ software operation: open APP-import pictures to canvas-click the bottom menu [color mixing]-[inverse coloring]
Principle: leaves are dark-colored light-absorbing materials, and the black area will be burned when laser engraving.
Therefore, it is necessary to adjust the black and white of the design (the original black → engraving white, the original white → burning visible). The contrast between the original color of the leaf and the darkness of the engraving mark is used to present the pattern.
Similarly, it is also applicable to dark or light-absorbing materials such as aluminum, shale, leaves, and black photo paper.
🔥 Step 3: Engraving
Reference parameters:
Power 55% (power too high burn through the blade, too low carving is not obvious)
Hit point time 500 (moving at a constant speed to avoid local overheating)
DPI400
The parameters for the laboratory optimal data, for reference only! Recommended to the actual situation for adjustment.
✔️ Note: first try to adjust the parameters of the waste leaves. Leaf vein direction to follow its trend.
