henrik_o
07-22-2009, 12:42 PM
...probably not a new trick by any means but I hadn't thought about it before. While applying myself in sketching 'real' signs I've been making some give-aways, I'd like to call them 'signettes'. I have tried to go for a rough and simple style that looks a bit hand made.
For one set of these, I took a picture of the sign blank (a piece of oak with part of the log surface showing, it's called vankant in Swedish, don't know the English term). Cropped the pic and resized it to the mm size of the actual blank. Imported this into Vcarve Pro and set as a background image. Then I repeated a simple border pattern such that it followed the vankant. I think it makes for a subtle touch. Again, this is probably really old news, but I hadn't done it before.
This is what the file looks like in Vcarve Pro:
5591
And a close-up:
5592
The signs, stained and oiled;
5593
5594
5595
Nothing special, but I learned something new and I think this could be a really interesting thing to play around with if using a blank with a lot of 'character': one could sketch out the decorative elements to blend into the wood, its curls, knots and etc.
It's too bad Vcarve Pro doesn't have a proper pen tool, because I just realized my Wacom pen & pad works inside Vcarve Pro as well! Oh well, for now the Draw Curve tool works reasonably well.
For one set of these, I took a picture of the sign blank (a piece of oak with part of the log surface showing, it's called vankant in Swedish, don't know the English term). Cropped the pic and resized it to the mm size of the actual blank. Imported this into Vcarve Pro and set as a background image. Then I repeated a simple border pattern such that it followed the vankant. I think it makes for a subtle touch. Again, this is probably really old news, but I hadn't done it before.
This is what the file looks like in Vcarve Pro:
5591
And a close-up:
5592
The signs, stained and oiled;
5593
5594
5595
Nothing special, but I learned something new and I think this could be a really interesting thing to play around with if using a blank with a lot of 'character': one could sketch out the decorative elements to blend into the wood, its curls, knots and etc.
It's too bad Vcarve Pro doesn't have a proper pen tool, because I just realized my Wacom pen & pad works inside Vcarve Pro as well! Oh well, for now the Draw Curve tool works reasonably well.