Woman and Dove Picasso by Kenno

Last crawled date: 3 years ago

This is project that takes a line drawing and renders it as a 3D print.
Here I take a photo from the interwebs of a Picasso line drawing of Dove and Woman for the subject.
Next, I import the drawing into Inkscape, a free, Open source graphics program.
In Inkscape, I [covert-strokes to paths]
Then selectively alter and move parts of the drawing so that no part of the picture is not attached to another part, so when printed, everything is attached to something else. We are building a 3D sculpture out of a drawing.
Next, I modify some of the nodes and curves along the lines to functionally strengthen some joined areas, so the sculpture will be able to hold its own weight. Some aspects were also modified for aesthetics. I actually quite like the rendering. It’s not Picasso, it’s Picassoesque, but in a way that retains his distinctive lines and proportions. I think he might even approve. So, save the rendering as a plain SVG file.
Next, import the drawing svg-file into Tinkercad, free, Open source, web-based CAD program. Tinkercad will automatically extrude the svg lines to about 2cm deep. This is a remarkably wonderful feature. Now, just download the file as stl. Load it to your slicer program, in this case, MatterContol, a free, open source, 3D printing program with internal slicer. Here, I’m using a 220mm x 3 print bed, so I scale the object to 190x150mm, leaving the extrusion at 2cm.
As you can imagine, it’s a very complicated object to slice, the program really had to chew on it. My computer is contemporary and MatterControl is only 32bit, so, that 15 seconds of slice time felt like hours.
I made an error in my haste here, I’m printing in PET-G Glow in the Dark translucent white. I left the setting on PLA, and the nozzle temp at 200C. It got a titch stringy. Results may vary. However, the stringy mess was very easy to remove with mini-Dremel milling heads, large and tiny, and sharp hobby knife. So, it took an hour of maxillofacial and craniofacial surgery to liberate both the woman and the dove. Where else do you get to employ this highly refined surgery technique as a human and veterinary surgeon? In fact, the experience was quite pleasant, working so intimately with the lines and seeing them transform into a beautiful object.
Results may vary. I had one other haste problem, in the final rendering of the 2D drawing, I had moved her left eye a bit to the left and stretched her eyebrow, so it would intersect with her face line. This did not render though in the slicer, and her eye was held on only by trailing. So, yes, at one-point she went blind in one eye. I immediately recovered the eyeball and sent it to a specialist for ocular surgery, which actually made it considerably easier then working on it while intact. She was quite pleased with the result, those are some pretty peepers she has there. She was nervous that I might leave a scar on her face, but hey, this really is plastic surgery we are doing here, so, superglue left a traceless healing. She was thrilled, me too.
I think the results speak for themselves. This was my first try at a complex extruded line object. Things went well enough, that is the rendering is good enough to carry the artist’s intent that you can still grasp the work of this master of line and expression. I’ll be back!