1st attempt at acrylic etching

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Thk's to SacredTbag for his Guide to Acrylic Etching in the Guides and Turorials section
http://www.xoxideforums.com/guides-t...c-etching.html

I need some more practice but I'm happy with the results of trying for the 1st time...

1st attempt on the left
2nd in the middle
sketch on the right



2nd attempt ...

WhiteBoy88

Not bad at all. Your lines look really clean and even.

GrizzlyBear

Good job, it make me want to do the same to my case. I really like the angry bee too.

Irish2685

Good job. Did you use the Dremel Engraver?

SacredTbag

i'm pretty sure he did use an engraver, you won't get lines like that from a rotary tool.

that looks pretty damn good for a first and second try. and i'm glad my tutorial was put to some use!

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Thk's for the words of encouragement and ya I love that bee, one of my artist friends whipped that sketch out in a couple of minutes. He's going to pull out a finished product when he has time. Can't wait

Yep I went out and bought the $20 dremel engraver from Nome Depot
Ironic that 3 of the stores were sold out and I had to go 20 minutes out of my way (each way) on the trip home from work to pick one up

It was a lot easier to use then I was expecting ... The tool glides pretty well it's just getting used to the noise and odd pulsing in your hand... think tatto gun
The biggest thing I noticed is, plan out your lines .. I had the tool on the lowest setting and bumped the speed up for etching
My etching skills need some serious work.

You want a smooth glide path … pulling the dremel towards myself I never lost sight of the line
To smooth out the lines I locked my wrist and kept my arm off the acrylic and used my elbow and arm movements for navigation.

When I tried to use it like a pen I didn’t have the range of motion for making a long line or curve.
If I started a line to a curve like I was wiring and then tried to slide over like it got wavy, sloppy and hard to control.
I think what helped my lines is that I have used fountain pens in the past. Similar to a fountain pen you don’t use your wrist but your whole arm and elbow floating just above the paper.
If you’ve never tried writing likes this pull out a pen, hold it like normal but instead of your wrist pull your arm off the table and use your elbow and arm; after a paragraph or two you will get the technique and your hand writing will look a lot better. I don’t use this to write on a normal basis as clean flowing notes aren’t necessary, but for filling out checks and birthday cards my scrawl turns into clean clear writing

And the tutorial from SacredTbag was nice, short and very helpful, nice to see that it wasn't going to be very painful and only 40 bucks to give it shot to boot ...
dremel and some then practice acrylic ... and I could always have returned the dremel if I my attempts were incompetent

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Light Table build out
Sorry for the two long replies … but I’ve cut about half of what I originally had in them

I don't see the fluorescent light on the Nome Depot website, but it’s round and about 20” inches across, 2 circular fluorescent bulbs around 18” and 10ish … this is just a guess I’ll post some pic’s once I start the build
Open item so it was cheaper …

I have a kid table 3’x3’ ish 1 ½ feet tall with a MDF top that is warped cracked and water soaked, but it has metal legs

Current plan go out and buy a ½ to ¾ inch thick MDF sheet 30ish dollars
Cut the sheet into two rectangles roughly a little less then ½ the sheet size
Cut out an inside square in one sheet leaving a 6 to 7 inch boarder

Mount the legs to the corners of this sheet;
Grab a thin acrylic sheet and cut it to the size of the board

I may look for some thin tented sheet to create a glow top or find some translucent spray paint to shoot on it
I’m going to search the forum on this, but any help would be appreciated on the best way to create the glow top.

Screw the acrylic down on the top of the board with the legs on it
Mount the light under table, I already picked up some wire and a wall switch to hook it up. I just need a wall plug wire to finish the electrical system for the light

I may hang the light underneath so I can easily remove it when I’m not using the light.

When I’m done using the light table I will put the other sheet of MDF over the acrylic top to prevent ruining it and will have a small table to continue to use.
I’ll most likely drill a couple holes on the edges of the acrylic toped board and glue in some threaded nuts. And just run a few screws through the top board to secure it.

I know I may be able to buy a light table for less but I’d rather build it myself. I have no clue what the light tables cost, I purposely didn’t look
I’m glad I found the tutorial, yet another hobby item and a good excuse to buy some more toys and build something !!!!!!

Having the short table was nice this way it was a lot easier for me to hover directly over the area to be etched.

WhiteBoy88

SacredTbag has done some pen work in the past, and he's always been the artistic one.

Are you looking to get a soft light glow from the cover? You could try hitting it lightly with spray paint, or you could use some sandpaper to frost it enough to diffuse the light.

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I'll try out the sandpaper tonight (hopefully)
I'm not very good at drawing from scratch .. but maybe doing this will allow me to make something workable

Ahh for the wall plug ... I have extra computer power cables
Just cut the end off and wire that up ... who said pack ratting all that old crap wasn't a good idea anyway ...

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I didn't try any sanding techniques out ...
One of my friend’s daughter draws some pretty cool stuff...
I'm using one of her drawings for some more practice ...
The printout is roughly 18 inches tall

It was late and I was tired and a small garage light just doesn't really work for this ... my lines are rough but it's still good practice...
The pics are taken in a parking garage ... I need those overhead lights
I may finish up in the next couple of days on this attempt
Being tired caused almost instant eye strain which turned into instant sloppy work... lesson learned

Attempt 3 in progress

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I played with setting a light under the drawing and the acrylic on top and really didn't get good lines on the etching...

Stopped at wally world during lunch and picked up a $8.88 fluorescent bulb

a couple shots of just the light shining on it (using a piece of paper to block the bulb from shining in my face .. I'll just mask if off with black electrical tape

The second shot is a piece of paper with red dry erase board marker on it ...
I'm going to play with different colored papers until I get the best contrast

You can see in the Red light how it lights up the entire acrylic sheet and lights the paper ...

In person it's clearer the etch lines pop out over the drawing.. the camera is bringing out all of the marks on the plastic cover sheet

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Not much time to work on it at night but worked on finishing the outline (just a little more needed) and starting to shade

The collar is all jacked up, but I think I can fix it when I shade that section

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Ok in the next reply I'm going to add some shots of my finished product.
While it looks ok to me I'm very ify on it as I am being critical every line bobbles and skew and proportion just pops out to me.

I shaded the hair so the etches would follow in lines like natural hair, I do like this touch when it's lit up... the pic's don't really relay this detail like in person.

My friends all thought it kicked asp, but I want better...

Side Note
My 16 year old nephew is in for a treat ... I've already starting building out a sub system for his car ...
Good kid so I'm hooking him up with a system: kicker 10's, Fosgate Punch amp, custom built sub boxes (haven’t started on the enclosures yet) and a custom rack mount for the farad cap, wiring and amp
The amp and cap will be covered with an acrylic sheet, this way when he tosses crap in his trunk the amp doesn't get smashed etc...
I wasn’t going to do anything to the acrylic cover sheet, but now I got the perfect thing … What 16 year old wouldn’t want a pic like this and system to match.

I'm going to scale the elf up (this one's around 18" tall) to around 24 to 26 inches maybe more and add some flames at the bottom and a few around the edges, I have a friend who's going to teach me how to do flames next week

Anywho here's some pic's of the finished product
Let me know what yall think ...
is it ok, decent or crap?

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I spent maybe 3 to 3 1/2 hours over a few days to complete this
I loved it, ignoring everything, and just losing myself into a good project... felt good

Some finished product pics...
I'm not going to clean this one up anymore, since I'm going to do it over on a new sheet .. practice practice practice
I may scale it down to around 6 to 12 inches so I can finish a few in the time it took to do this one

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SacredTbag

you're definitely getting better. i never tried the "lift your arm" technique, i always used it as a pen. guess it works out for me, most of the work i do is extremely detailed and doesn't have a lot of long lines.

but, lookin good man. maybe when i get some free time (where did all that go?) i'll try to get a new piece started