Engraving on cardboard is a relatively young genre of art. In a simple way, this type of work is called "scratch", because in order to achieve a drawing, that is, directly engraving, you need to scratch some surface. And for such purposes, even cardboard is suitable. This type of engraving can be mastered not only by people with experience in art, but also by novice artists.
The engraving itself depends on such factors:
- textures of the selected material, in this case cardboard;
- relief heights;
- pressure force during operation; lines can be made of different thickness and color intensity.
Color engraving on cardboard
How is engraving done?
Of the materials for engraving will be useful:
- cardboard of any kind (packaging, bound, pressboard);
- needles or files;
- lancet;
- knives.
The technique itself goes through several stages:
- A soft pencil or lithographic depict a picture on tracing paper or glossy paper. After that, the drawn side of the tracing paper is applied to a sheet of cardboard. A special plate is driven along it from above with pressure. But further relief is obtained with the help of scratching or engraving with chisels, or appliqué.
- Water-based paint will help to give texture to the engraving. You need to fix the result with nitro-lacquer, while avoiding streaks.
Please note that this technique is more professional. It is done by hand, but the print of the picture in this case should not exceed 2030 centimeters, otherwise not all the paint will stick to the paper. For such a procedure, the paint must be chosen thick, often ordinary oil paint and white are mixed, diluted with drying oil in a ratio of 7: 3. Such material must be aged for several days in an open container.
A layer of paint is applied to cardboard with a thickness of 0.1–0.5 mm. For printing, water-based inks are often chosen, mixing them with glycerin. The paper is applied on top of the cardboard with a layer of paint and the lapping process begins. Plates that rub paper are often rubbed with wax. This is necessary for better glide.
This procedure can be performed in mechanized mode using an etching machine. In this case, a board and several layers of soft paper are additionally applied to the paper, then there will be no violation of the relief of the print.
Color engraving can only be done on cardboard. Initially, an imprint of a warm shade is made. Then the material is dried, and then prints of other colors are alternately made. This procedure takes a lot of time, but in engraving you can achieve different shades, reliefs and textures on one cardboard.
In order to enhance the impression of engravings, artists use attachments applied on top of the sheet from which the print is made in those places where the artist wants to saturate the drawing. But a mask that is placed between paper and cardboard can enhance the effect of the color scheme.
The engraving tool itself - the needle file - must be held either straight or at an angle of 35 degrees. There are situations when the smallest slots are compressed during printing, and the impression effect is not achieved. And also do not use crosshatching in this technique. The problem with this technique is that during its application, whole pieces of material will break out on the cardboard, so the print will be of poor quality, and you will not achieve the desired picture.
This method is more suitable for professionals, since a person who encounters such an engraving for the first time may not understand the principle of the method. In addition, it will be especially difficult to make the right print or apply paint so that the required relief is obtained. Any spots, irregularities not in the planned place can smear the effect of the engraving, so you need to practice before doing such work. Or choose the simple option.
Home engraving option
Engraving can be done by hand. The principle of its manufacture will differ from artistic way, but with its help it will be interesting to spend time. Such an engraving on cardboard is called a “scratch”. A background is applied to the cardboard. It can be monophonic and multi-colored.
Stages of engraving on cardboard
A black wax layer is applied on top. And then with a special knife, different figures or a whole picture are cut out on it. True, relief cannot be achieved in such engravings, but the result can be very beautiful and refined. Often such drawings are sold even in children's departments, but they can be made independently.
For this you will need:
- cardboard;
- wax pencils;
- brush;
- gouache.
The cardboard must be completely painted over, it can be a multi-colored or plain background. We apply gouache on top of the sheet, leaving no gaps. It is best to choose black paint, then the engraving will have a contrast. After the paint layer has dried, you can engrave the picture using scratching tools. Draw images to your liking. You can change the thickness of the line and the imprint with the force of pressing.
And in this way, you can paint over the finished drawing. To make it appear on the engraving, you will need to erase the top layer with a coin. But such variations are quite primitive and suitable for children.
Engraving - Pretty interesting view art that continues to evolve. Much of it depends on the skill of the artist. But also this genre is suitable for those who like to experiment and take risks.
Creative activities are an integral part of the upbringing and education of the child. There are many types art where kids of all ages can create. For example, engraving for children is a technique that can be mastered as early as three years old. But such creativity will also be interesting for teenagers and parents.
Engraving as a form of visual art
Very often this creative technique is put on a par with fine arts. Indeed, these varieties of creativity have enough in common. Craft in the technique of engraving involves the removal of the protective layer using special tool- spatula or pen. Today on sale you can find ready-made kits for creating such a masterpiece. An alternative option is to do the craft from and to with your own hands. Let's consider this technique in detail and try to understand why engraving is useful for children?
Ready-made kits for factory-made creativity
Today in any toy or stationery store you can find a wide variety of sets for children's creativity. There are among them those that are intended to be created. Usually, such a set includes a basis for creating a three-dimensional pattern, a special spatula / engraver and instructions. Under a black background, a white or colored base can be hidden. For ease of use, usually the lines to be drawn with the tool are already marked in color on a black base. The cost of the Engraving for Children set ranges from 100-500 rubles. It all depends on the size and complexity of the drawing. Please note: the recommended age must be indicated on the packaging young artist. For the little ones choose simple pictures small in size, and for older children and adults - more complex. Attention! At the age of 3-5 years, kids are recommended to make engravings only in collaboration with adults. The task of parents is to tell about this creativity for children, show the basic techniques and control the whole process.
Making an engraving using a candle
If you want to make a set for creativity no worse than in a store, you can do it yourself at home. To do this, take a cardboard picture, you can use, for example, a page from a torn book. Cut out the base to the right size. Next, rub it with a regular candle or a piece of paraffin. The layer should be even and uniform. Then cover the workpiece with a thick layer of gouache without adding water. Leave to dry for several hours. After that, your engraving for children is ready, you can start creating. Invite the child to clear the whole picture or some of its individual elements. You can also take an ordinary piece of cardboard, paint it arbitrarily with paints, and then cover it with wax and gouache. It is more convenient to draw pictures on such an engraving without completely removing the paint.
How to make an engraving with your own hands without wax or paraffin?
If you do not have a candle at home, you should not be upset. Take cardboard or a sheet of thick paper and paint the base well with these pencils, and on top, as in the first method, apply gouache and dry. Another option involves the use of a finished picture and film. Ordinary packing bags, file folders or thin plastic packaging will do. Glue a piece of film to the base with a glue stick, apply gouache on top and dry. Making engravings is also possible from glossy pictures. And this is one of the most simple ways. Take a page from a magazine, a coloring book cover, or some other glossy picture. Apply gouache directly on it and after complete drying, start creating. Preschoolers are advised to use thin tools when creating engravings and try to hold them like a pencil or pen - this will help to adapt the hand to writing.
The benefits of this type of creativity
Children's prints are interesting and very useful crafts. This type creativity develops fine motor skills, teaches the child to be attentive and diligent. If you use a purchased set, the baby learns to trace and draw the correct lines. Many kids love homemade engraving bases that don't have markings on them. When working with such material, each time you have to guess what is hidden under the paint and where it should be erased. Interesting and arbitrary drawing on the basis to create an engraving with a multi-colored background. Try to create with your child, using both ready-made kits and homemade ones. Remember that the finished craft can be a wonderful interior decoration or great gift on a holiday to one of the relatives.
Creativity for children is a limitless possibility of self-expression and development. Never forget this and try to regularly make a variety of decorative crafts with your daughter or son.
Engraving is a technique for creating and applying a design, the result of which is a print or printed impression on paper or other material. Engraving is a part of graphic art, since the main visual means in creating prints are strokes and lines.
What is engraving
Engraving is a complex term that combines printed works created in various techniques print. The impression of the engraving is made using a printing plate called a board. The board can be made of wood or other materials, such as metal or wax. The drawing on the board is a mirror image of the print and consists of space and printing elements.
Note: if the print is black and white and made on white paper, then the blank elements on the board are those that turn out to be white in the print, and paint is applied to the printing elements of the board, which “draws” the print.
The engraving technique is divided into letterpress and gravure printing. If the engraving is done in the letterpress technique, then on the “board” the printing elements are above the space ones, so that only they touch the paper. When gravure is selected, the "board" looks the opposite, i.e. the whitespace is higher and the print is based on a controlled thickness of the ink layer.
Letterpress engravings are flat and smooth, while gravure prints produce uneven and raised prints.
Who is an engraver
Engraving is an art form that requires more than the pictorial talent of the artist. In addition to creating a drawing, its idea and composition, engraving requires applied skills in creating engraving forms and knowledge of printing press techniques. Due to the complex nature of the creation of engraving, it is customary in today's art to separate the meanings of the concept of "engraver".
The generally accepted meaning of the term explains him as the creator of the engraving, that is, the printing plate, the design on it and the printed impressions. In this sense, the engraver himself or another artist can be the author of the idea and composition of the drawing. In a narrow sense, the word "engraver" is a professional and refers to a specialist who owns several engraving techniques and techniques, working with various materials such as glass, precious metals, tree, etc.
Types of engraving
Engraving is a complex technique for creating objects of art. There are several divisions of engraving into types:
- Printmaking techniques distinguish between letterpress prints and gravure prints.
- Depending on the material of the “board” or the printing plate, woodcut (a type of woodcut), linocut (on linoleum), engraving on metal, cardboard, wax, etc.
- The method of drawing a pattern on a printing plate is called engraving technique and is divided into chemical etching, engraving with a cutter, etching (etching of a metal surface with acids), aquatint, or etching with resin, mederite, or etching with alcohol, dry point and others.
- Questions of authorship gave rise to another type - autoengraving, that is, created by one person - the author of the original idea and composition, who controlled the process of its creation from beginning to end.
Famous engravers
The most famous engraver in the history of art is Albrecht Dürer, greatest artist Northern Renaissance, which brought engraving, and woodcuts in particular, to a new stage of development. Thanks to prints unique in their detail and complexity of execution, such as “Melancholia”, “Rhino”, “Adam and Eve” and many others, Dürer was deservedly recognized as the best European engraver.
Lucas van Leyden, a contemporary of Dürer and a well-known Danish artist who also worked in the engraving genre, managed to learn the technique of letterpress almost independently. Lucas van Leyden worked on woodcuts with early childhood, his youthful works, such as "Pilgrims" and "Mohammed and Monk Sergius" (14 years old), amaze with maturity and high technique.
Among the great artists, Rembrandt, Gustave Dore, Francisco Goya, William Blake and Ivan Shishkin were fond of engraving.
Engraving on cardboard appeared relatively recently, having managed to win the sympathy of many artists, including beginners. This type belongs to letterpress, because the printed elements are formed after the cutters select the blank elements that will not touch the paper.
This technique requires certain materials to be prepared:
- needle files (can be replaced with an awl, needle);
- cardboard, which can be of any texture and thickness. For more professional printing, cardboard should be at least two millimeters;
- cardboard or paper for printing, drawing is suitable;
- rubber roller or spatula. In the most extreme case, you can replace it with a brush with bristles;
- tracing paper;
- copy paper;
- plexiglass;
- mascara (optional)
- oil or acrylic paint, gouache is suitable for children's creativity.
The needles must be sharply sharpened, because the efficiency of their use and the accuracy of the lines drawn depend on this.
The process and methods of making engravings on cardboard
- Sketch drawing. This stage is performed on plain paper and includes the creation of a composition, layout. When thinking over a sketch, it must be borne in mind that the creation of an image occurs by cutting out certain sections on cardboard. Therefore, in order to avoid tearing the working surface of the cardboard, the drawing should be done with a spot or with simple strokes, but not with cross strokes.
- After developing a sketch, the drawing is transferred to tracing paper.
- The sketch on paper is broken down into shadows and light. Light-shadow breakdown is carried out with ink or a felt-tip pen. This will help not to get confused when working with cardboard. If it is supposed to be colored, it is advisable to perform color scheme. In this case, it should be borne in mind that the details scratched on the cardboard will be light.
- From tracing paper, the sketch is transferred to cardboard. This is done in two ways:
- In the first case, the drawing on tracing paper is drawn very soft pencil. Then, to transfer it to cardboard, it will be enough just to put the tracing paper with a pattern on the cardboard and smooth the surface with a spoon. Or circle not writing pen along translucent lines. But then there is a possibility that not all lines will be printed, and the drawing itself will be displayed in a mirror projection.
- In the second case, you can simply translate the drawing through carbon paper. This method is more convenient, and the image can be made "looking" both to the right and to the left.
- On the resulting image on the cardboard, it is necessary to cut out the gap elements with the help of tools. Cardboard should be scratched carefully, because any flaw will be noticeable on the finished work. For better adhesion to the pigment, cardboard can be primed. In this case, you can apply the pattern with a hot needle for burning. Another advantage of the primer is that it keeps the stamp more durable and allows you to make the drawing clearer.
- In addition to scratching, you can glue an application on cardboard. The result of using real branches, blades of grass, leaves will look especially interesting. The application technique is good not only as an auxiliary, but also as an independent one.
- After preparatory stage finished, you can proceed to fill with pigment. Regardless of whether the final image is supposed to be monochrome or color, the technique here is the same: a small amount of the desired pigment is poured onto plexiglass, evenly distributed on a roller and transferred to cardboard. It is necessary to transfer with a layer of 0.1–0.5 mm, evenly distributing the pigment over the work.
Important! When using oil paint, the surfaces interacting with it must be primed. For other colors, this may not be the case.
- If acrylic or gouache is used, then before printing the paint, if it has dried up, must be moistened. Dried color will not give any effect.
- Next comes printing. For this, in classical graphics, an etching machine is used. At home, it is replaced by a tablespoon without any inscriptions and patterns. For printing on dyed cardboard is superimposed Blank sheet thick paper or larger card stock. For reliability, it can be fixed with paper clips. To create a pattern, the sheet is smoothed with a spoon in the direction from the center to the edges. This must be done carefully, without skipping sections.
- The quality of the resulting image is checked by bending the corner of the sheet. After ironing the entire surface, the sheet must be carefully, without lubricating the paint, separated from the cardboard.
- Let the image dry.
The resulting print should be good quality, no paint streaks, no defects. The coloring should be uniform, and the image should be well readable. If there are any flaws, do not despair. You can try to correct the situation by making corrections to the operating time on cardboard. And you can also change the color solution, getting several options for the image.
Please note! If you need to change the color of the image, and the cardboard has been covered oil paint, then the previous colored layer should be removed as much as possible with a dry cloth, since even a thin layer of oil can dry up to six months.
Stages of engraving on cardboard
Registration of work
Designing a work is no less an art than creating it. An incorrectly selected frame can spoil the impression even of a masterpiece. It should not be too bulky, distracting attention. The frame is just an elegant addition to the picture that matches the mood, color scheme and tonal performance of the image.
A good solution would be a seamless passe-partout. This is a frame made of white or tinted cardboard (thick paper). Its width can start from three centimeters, depending on the size of the picture. The main rule when creating a passe-partout is no seams. It is made from a single sheet of paper and pasted on the back of the image. The top and sides are the same width, while the bottom is slightly wider. For example, if three stripes are equal to three centimeters, then the lower one will be equal to - five. Despite the simplicity, this design often looks much neater than a full-fledged frame.
The work decorated in a passe-partout can be covered with plexiglass, the size of which is chosen in accordance with the extreme borders of the frame. It protects the image from dust and dirt, and also gives accuracy when hanging on the wall. If you want to do without it, the picture should be covered with a special varnish, selected taking into account the paint used.
If the engraving was done with oil paint, then you should not immediately draw up the work. Even if the top layer of oil seems to have dried out, this impression is deceptive. Such paint can dry from six months to several years, depending on the thickness of the layer. The drying process will be accelerated if covered finished work thin layer of retouch varnish. Otherwise, when making a raw engraving into a passe-partout, there is a chance to see oil stains on it, which will not add aesthetic value to the work.
Conclusion
Cardboard engraving is a simple type of letterpress that can be easily done at home. But in order to fully disclose the technique and obtain a decent result, it is worth using, if not professional, then at least high-quality materials. Cardboard is better to take dense, not "eating" the paint. It is preferable to use watercolor paper (use the glossy side) or drawing paper for printing. Then the work on the engraving will bring a lot of pleasure and delight you with an excellent result.
Today in specialized stores you can find a lot of different sets for children's creativity: educational, educational, just entertaining. Such toy products attract the attention of children, but it is much more interesting to create something similar with parents, thereby learning all the secrets of the creative process.
And in fact, many children creative kits do not represent anything complicated that could not be reproduced independently at home. For example, engravings familiar to many can be made with your own hands in just about half an hour. How? Let's find out.
For creating color engraving will need:
- white cardboard (not glossy);
- wax pencils different colors(you can also use oil pastels);
- black gouache (you can take another dark color);
- liquid soap;
- tassel;
- orange stick (or other thin and sharp object for engraving).
Step 1. Create a colored base-background
Most of the prints that are sold in stores are made with a single color background (golden or silver), and it will be more interesting for children to see the picture in different colors. To do this, we paint one side of the white matte cardboard in random order with multi-colored wax crayons- the more saturated and contrasting the colors, the more effective they will look when engraved. Note: instead of wax pencils you can use ordinary or felt-tip pens, but they will need to be additionally sketched on top with a paraffin candle, and only then proceed to the next step. 
Step 2. Making an intermediate layer of engraving
To make a kind of "protective" invisible layer that will not allow you to erase the colored background when engraving, you will need liquid soap. It must be evenly applied to the background mosaic. Note: "rubbing" the soap into the pastel should be more careful, because the color can be "smeared", that is, transferred to a piece of paper of a different color. 
Step 3. Apply the finishing layer for scratching
After the soap has soaked into the colored background of the cardboard, it is necessary to paint it tightly with thick black gouache. Even if in some places the paint will diverge from the wax, it is necessary to repeat painting until the background stops showing through. You can paint over both the entire sheet and part of it. 
We are waiting for the gouache to dry, and our engraving is ready. (although it would be more correct to say scratching, which is only one of the varieties of engraving). Now you can pick up a thin pointed object (for example, an orange stick, a knitting needle, an empty pen rod, etc.) and start scratching a new masterpiece. 
