Create Background Patterns with Your Laser Engraver

Bricks, tiles, diamond plate steel, and other uniformly-shaped manufactured items make good backgrounds. Creating them is even simpler than the checkering pattern. Using CorelDRAW, simply draw the shape of the repeating element, use Step and Repeat to space them over the field of the pattern, and add a background fill that is darker than the graphic. With bricks, the darker, deeper fill represents the mortar lines.

Basketweave, fabric, and latticework also make great background patterns. They can easily be incorporated into many designs. Since these types of patterns are based on natural materials, they do not need to be completely uniform. In fact, uniformity and perfection appear obviously unnatural. Adding variations and defects can make these patterns look more realistic. It’s fairly easy to add these features with a good graphics program. Random patterns can be used as a background carving. These can be any subject as long as the layout appears random and the design elements are small. Typical carved random backgrounds mimic concrete, pebbles, bark, and small-scale textures. Anything goes including abstract designs.

There are many examples of random patterns available in CorelDRAW’s texture fill library. Once a pattern is found that looks acceptable, it can be converted to grayscale. Texture fills can also be edited to make them finer or coarser. Edited texture fills can be saved to the texture fill library.