u/IntheHotofTexas

Last time I showed the unsatisfactory WIP of my first use of ABS engraver's plastic as a relief medium.

1st and 2nd Experience With ABS Plastic Relief Engraving : r/printmaking

This is the rework of the Wolf Woman piece. The image is an adaptation of my original painting, Wolf Woman, the Southwestern folk character who wanders the wilderness collecting the bones of wolves who have died unnatural deaths. When she collects enough for a full set, the goes to her cave and sings the wolf back to life.

This was cut into 8"x12" ABS sign-making plastic plate which has a thin green top layer and white core. Tools are engraving tools, gravers, burins, etc., because linocut tools won't work on it. It is only 1/20" thick, so it can't be cut very deep. Therefore, inking must be done delicately, with thin layers, a hard brayer and deliberation.

Even so, this print has some chattery places in the white areas. That would normally be dealt with by using the rotary tool with cone file bit to take those area down even more. I didn't worry about this this time, because later today, I will get my new ultrasonic cutter, and I want to see if I can use that to cut away all the large whites. That way, I can lay the plate on newsprint to ink. Any ink that would have soiled the white area because of the thin plate will just end up on the newsprint and be discarded.

The whites will still need some work around the edges. I can't cut away all but a slender black line. But deepening the whites areas consumes a lot of time normally, and what can be cutaway and the cut edges beveled will make things a lot more efficient and easier to print. And I can cut away things like the spaces between the hanging hair. That kind of narrow spaces are hard to file down.

So, it's still work in progress, and I'll update with how the cutter works out. I've come to really like this material. The rotary cone file makes possible more subtle effects in places like the flames than could be easily done with lino tools.

Here are plate and print.

https://preview.redd.it/2ztj56mjp60h1.png?width=3226&format=png&auto=webp&s=d245532d41745085782947e83aa11237f0ec8445

I have also reworked the "Poulet! Poulet!" subject in ABS that I also showed last time as unsatisfactory WIP last time. It's still a learning exercise, but it deals with some different issues than Wolf Woman. I'll post that tomorrow, and it should appear the next day.

And I have put a complete discussion of using ABS, the tools and such into my new blog:

https://wakkawakkastudio.blogspot.com/2026/05/relief-printmaking-with-abs-engravers.html

I've been posting some learning experiences with interpreting my acrylic painting of the Wolf Woman in relief printing. And I've tried another in 8"x12" ABS, interpreting one of my favorite scenes in a favorite film, "To Catch a Thief". In the film, Grace Kelly's character is driving her sportscar like mad to get Cary Grant's character away from the police. She has to brake hard for a chicken crossing the road (no doubt setting up the classic joke), and after they drive on, they hear a crash. The next scene is the police with their car up on a rock wall, and the chicken standing around unfazed. The driver is on the radiophone trying to explain, "Poulet! Poulet!".

This is ABS engraver's plastic, a thin plastic sheet with a very thin color layer on one side. Green is a good color for showing transfers. You carve through to white. The whole sheet is very thin, and it is harder than lino. Lino tools don't work. It needs engravers tools, so this is done with Lyons burins and other tools and a Lyons 45 lpi multi-liner. Because it's hard and thin, you can't cut as deep as with lino. I used a rotary tool with a rotary file cone to deepen the white spaces.

But it's still shallow, which brings me to the first lesson. You have to ink very carefully and with planning. This is my usual Caligo Safe Wash. It's doubly demanding because it seems to me that this material doesn't grab ink like lino. You have to be persistent and make may careful passes with lighter pressure to get enough ink. And you have to think your way through making as sure as possible that the brayer is always supported at both ends so it doesn't dip into the broad white areas. It's a job for a hard brayer. I used a Speedball hard rubber. I still had to clean up a little sometimes. A single mistake can be covered by artist's tape to keep it from printing. I may see about getting a 10" or 12" hard brayer that can run on rails cut from this plastic and places on either side of the plate so I don't have to be so careful of the shallows.

The upside to the plate having less attraction to ink is that the plates clean up with just running water. Didn't need soap.

But with care, both plates inked up well and printed well. The thin looking places in "Poulet!" is sheen from room lights. Both prints have good solid blacks. I transferred the cartoon with Modge Podge. The thin looking green is where I sanded to smooth burrs and such. The color is that thin. It's made for easy laser engraving for signs. Chris Pig (Black Pig Studio) put me onto this. I got the plastic from Amazon. I then found it a lot cheaper even from TEMU.

I'm still learning to use the engraving tools. So, the line shading on the Wolf Woman is crude. But I'm pleased with the wolf skull. I obviously missed a burr line between the arms and it picked up the ink and printed the line's halo.

"Poulet! Poulet!" was very much a quick experiment. It was the first time to use the 45 lpi multi-liner for shading. The clothing is okay. The faces, maybe not so much. Have to work on that. The ground at the bottom is stippled with a pointed tool, reducing the density as it goes higher to imply some shadow.

I'm having Lyons send me some more tools, mainly to do finer lines and lines that vary in width with length. And a halftone rake in 45 and 65 lpi. I wonder if 65 lpi will ink without clogging. I tried the multi-liner on the face. Kind of over-used it. Next time, I'll use it only for shade parts of the face and do the defined features with fine tooling.

So, I'm going to do both of these again, applying the lessons learned. Mainly with the Wolf Woman to use the new tools to do fine and finely controlled line shading. With "Poulet!", I want to do better on the face, although it looks better on the print than it did on the plate and work out how to better give the black roof features by showing reflections. Also, the background needs a different approach. And of course better handling of these new tools to make better lines.

I think the material has great potential. Chris Pig initially adopted it as a substitute for boxwood.

https://preview.redd.it/akehsym73lyg1.jpg?width=3551&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=38a6879ed0bfed9a7298ca926a2827a9c335b75a

...with engravers plastic. Laser engraving double color ABS plastic, sign material. Saw Chris Pig (Black Pig Studio) talking about it on his YouTube channel as an alternative to wood. Got some. It's pretty neat. Thin top layer of color (your choice), white underneath. 8"x12". It does not cut with lino tools, so I'm having to learn to use gravers. Took me a whole day to get the basics.

This plate takes fine detail. It will take even outrageously fine lines, like 85 l.p.i. lines, although that's seriously thin and probably a terror to ink for relief. But at 45 l.p.i., it's workable. Because of the way it cuts, you're cutting pretty shallow, if you don't take a long time, needing some care to ink, strictly with a hard brayer. But I drug out my rotary tool with the flexible extension and used a blunted cone shaped filer tip to take it down to easier inking depth.

So far, a square graver, after I sharpened the set (unlike lino tools, these don't come sharpened), for me, was the easiest way to do fine lining. A flat graver did the donkey work of most of the cutting, after I added a heel to the graver geometry.

It took me some time to learn the tools, so some of the shading lines could be thinner and better spaced. This is the plate after carving. The green top layer is degraded because I sanded off the remaining Modge Podge used to transfer the laser image of my cartoon, which is the black, all of which is at the green surface layer. I'll probably do a little more to it. It's not clear that the ground glare from the fire is what it is. It probably needs the same on the left of the bowl and below. Kind of need that anyway to set off the black bowl. May make the circular emanations around the skull more numerous if it looks good in mockup.

The surface is hard enough to allow very precise placement of the cuts. The flat graver rolls a thin surface layer off cleanly. The power head cuts it easily with good control. I can see this subbing for lino when I want very fine lining. I'll know more when I print it. One nice thing is that this plate is translucent, so with a strong light behind it, you can see through the back something of what the print will look like.

I find very little about this as a relief plate, but it's obviously known as a hand-graving material and sold by places like Intaglio. I'll come back and show what that looks like.

All the green on this plate will print black, as will any black. I just didn't black the whole background for the transfer so I could draw cuts in black pen. So, the hair will continue black into the background and the green/black shading lines that abut green will be black running into black.

By the way, I sanded it lightly first, and it took a gel medium/PVA laser transfer perfectly using the paper and wet rub-off method. Probably try release paper next time.

https://preview.redd.it/uvlr5p7fmfxg1.jpg?width=2413&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=aabd3c16d842ba77b675197715abc8750d088688

Chris also turned me onto John Farleigh, a 20th century UK woodcut artist who, among other things, illustrated for George Barnard Shaw and worked for London Transport. Been looking at some of his work, and it's moved me to get multi-line graving tools. A 45/5 and a 45/25 halftone rake. Google his images.