Free whale SVG files

Cutting whales: big shapes with a few fine lines

A whale is mostly one broad shape, which makes it forgiving to cut. Each file is 100 mm on its longer side. The fine parts are the mouth line and the grooves, which are slits about 1.5 mm wide at that size, the tips of the flukes, and on the spouting whale the two curls of water, about 3 mm thick. In vinyl and card everything cuts well from 80 mm up. For felt, foam or thin plywood use the whale silhouette or the whale tail.

The orca is drawn the way a single colour needs it: the body is solid and the white eye patch, chin, flank and saddle are holes. Cut it from black and put it on white, or back it with white card, and it reads as the real animal. The same trick works for the spouting whale in navy over pale blue.

The narwhal’s tusk is the one long thin part in the set. It is a twist of beads on a tapered core about 2 mm thick at its tip, so keep the narwhal at 100 mm or more in anything stiff.

How to open the files

• Cricut Design Space: choose Upload, pick the SVG, and add it to the canvas. Set the width you want; the shape is already welded.
• Silhouette Studio: Designer Edition and above open the SVG. The free Basic Edition does not, so open the DXF instead.
• LightBurn, xTool Creative Space and Glowforge: import the SVG, then set the layer to cut, score or engrave.
• Inkscape, Illustrator and Affinity: open the SVG. It is a plain filled path, so you can recolour it, add a stroke or combine it with your own work.
• Printing or sublimation: use the PNG, which has a transparent background.

Each design page lists the file’s narrowest part at seven sizes, so you can tell whether it will survive at the size you plan to cut.

Questions