PRIMARY TOOLS & MATERIALS:
PAINT, DIE CUTTING MACHINE

Additional Tools & Materials: Adobe Photoshop, camera, scanner, brush pen, die cutting software

Today pitted gouache paint with my digital die cutting machine. I began by drawing several uppercase Q letterforms with a thick brush pen. I chose my favorite, scanned it, then used Photoshop's Threshold settings to "clean it up" (see image 3). From there, I imported it into my Cameo Silhouette die cutting software and ran a few test cuts. 

I then switched to paper, trimming half a dozen or so 4" squares out of white card stock. I then created various color and texture backgrounds on these squares using gouache paints. Once they dried, I loaded them into the die cutter, and cut a letter Q out of each. I then played with scanning either the cutout letter (see image 4) or the negative "stencil" (image 1 and 3) or sometimes both (image 6). The last image is a stack of 4 or so "stencils" all rotated and then scanned together; which created some interesting depth. 

I think the most interesting result of this study is the cheesy, almost fake looking shadows that occur inside the images of the "knocked out" letters. It looks like I attempted to bevel or emboss the letter in Photoshop - but it's just the result of shifting shadows inside the scanner bed!