First Steps In Pyrography a 'Fire Art' 10

Hello friends this is...

FIRST STEPS IN PYROGRAPHY OR FIRE ART

I’m going to talk about ideas for themes of work in pyrography and why you should think about having a themed design for your work.

1. Our eyes are often drawn to look more closely to a display that carries similarities of pattern, form, colour and shape because it is easier on the eye to look at things that flow or have a connection. If a display has a mixture of too many different things and is splashed with an array of colours, then it is difficult to know what to look at first and sometimes we may just move on to the next exhibit or presentation.

2. If you are aiming to sell your work and you have rented a stall or are advertising your wares via a shop or over the Internet, then perhaps one of the best ways to attract attention to your work is to display articles that are connected by virtue of their design and colour.

3.You may have decided to produce pieces of pure art in pyrography and so you could choose to display works which cover a similar subject matter. I have seen numerous professional works of art successfully presented as a group of one theme.

4. The number of themes that you can choose from is limitless and includes patterns and designs from nature for example:- plants, flowers, leaves, animals to quirky fun designs and personalised items that you could produce to order. Are you interested in traditional design? Celtic designs offer a range of patterns as do many other cultural heritages. If you are working on decorating toys for children you could have some fun with nursery rhymes or use your designs as learning aids e.g. the alphabet or numbers up to ten.

5. An alternative to choosing subject themed designs, is to display your work as one or two different groups of colour. You will notice in stores how shop displays are often themed around one or two different colour schemes and they look very effective.

6. If the aim is to sell your work then it is important to try and make it stand out from the rest of the crowd. For instance you may have three or four objects that are totally different in design but are all decorated in varying shades of blue. You can produce a striking show of your work if you exhibit them in a single colour setting.

7. If the objects you are to sell have a secondary purpose such as a decorated picture frame or a candle holder then don’t forget to do the obvious and display your items with a picture in and a candle in the holder to illustrate their usefulness.

As promised another old time extract from Burnt Wood Etchings.

Flowers and foliage will doubtless have a special attraction for ladies, and may be used with charming effect on many articles, useful and ornamental.
Large, bold subjects, such as Lilies, Irises, Sunflowers, Daffodils and Marguerites are the best to choose from in the floral world, while for foliage only, Oak sprays, Blackberry, Laurel, Vine and Virginia creeper are very adaptable; in fact, the work of reproducing in Pyrography is much simplified when such subjects are chosen, as have very distinctive shapes and outlines.
In all flower drawing it is advisable that the artist first gets the outline correctly in pencil, before commencing with the point, as a mistake in the burning would be fatal in anything so fine and delicate as the petal of a flower, where the utmost softness and purity are required.

Source A Handbook of Pyrography or Burnt Wood Etching by Mrs. Maud Maude

We have talked about displaying objects with a colour theme but as yet I have not mentioned anything about the different ways that you can introduce colour into your work, so I will talk about this in my next blog.

First Steps In Pyrography a 'Fire Art' 9.

Hello fellow burners, I want to tell you about some exotic materials for scorching into in

FIRST STEPS IN PYROGRAPHY OR FIRE ART

What do I mean by exotic materials? These are resources that may offer you an interesting alternative to the norm however, they are not so readily available but with a touch of detective work, you'll soon find them .

1.They include Tagua slices (taken from a tree that has a nut which that helps maintain the forest as the nut is regularly harvested). I have not used these myself but after some research on the Internet you can find suppliers that deal with plain slices of Tagua or half nuts and even coloured Tagua pieces. Alternatively investigate you nearest natural craft supplier.

2.Gourds come in all shapes and sizes and can be made to look very attractive indeed especially if you plan your own range of original designs. They can also be obtained from natural craft suppliers or you can go direct and order over the Internet. I would be cautious in the beginning and only order a small amount if you have not had the chance to see or work with these materials before.

3.Most suppliers also offer alternatives to wood for burning, these may not be quite as exotic as the ones listed above but offer you a chance to extend your expertise into a range of different materials. They include papier mache and leather or you may like to try burning on a textile such as felt. The extract in my last blog from the old book of Burnt Wood Etching suggests burning on velvet, why not give this a try?

4. To some people the chance to use an exotic and rare wood may be appealing, but these woods are often under threat and therefore it is in the best interest of our natural world not to consider buying them please!

If you are unsure of the types of wood that are under threat then check them out on the Internet by looking them up on the Friends Of The Earth - Good Wood Guide. I burned a picture of an owl into a piece of Mahogany which is now a wood that is at risk of being endangered, but my portion of Mahogany was cut from an old item of furniture.

5. Old furniture sometimes exotic, offers you another way of obtaining rarer woods at a reasonable price but you should be prepared to remove any lacquer or finish from the wood. You will also need to be able to either cut down the wood to a workable size or find someone who can do this for you.

6. Consider the use of re-decorating old furniture. If you find an item you’d like to work with, then this could be a very stimulating little project. It offers you the exciting prospect to re-vamp and refresh it with your own individual decorative wood burning design. You might choose to decorate the backs of a set of dining chairs for instance - just think of how unique your work would be and the chairs would may look much finer than they did originally!

I promised you another burning secret from that old book of Wood Burning or Poker Work as it was often called because of the equipment that was used. Apparently that same equipment was used to etch into glass. Nowadays you can buy purpose made machines and materials for glass etching.

I am very wary of trying to etch glass with my own machine as the old pyrography machines reached a much higher temperature those of today, which are purpose built for wood burning. You never know, glass etching could turn out to be an interesting development and extension to your hobby of pyrography!

Woods for Burning.
Perhaps the most pleasant and fascinating of all forms of Poker work is burning upon glass. Here we have no smell, no smoke, and a delightful result for our labours.

It is easily understood that a much greater heat is required than for burning ordinary surfaces, and for the purpose a special point may be obtained, which can be brought by the bellows to an almost white heat.

The glass should be quite clean, and free from flaws, and rather larger than the design, as burning on the extreme edge of the glass sometimes causes it to split. It can be cut to size when finished. The pattern can be placed under the glass and traced over with a smooth firm pressure. When finished, it may be left with the little frost work of burnt glass on the edge of the lines, or it can be scraped clean with a sharp tool. The lines may be filled in with gold paint or enamel, when the work will appear to stand out in relief on the wrong side. A little ingenuity will suggest endless devices for varying the work and in nearly all cases the effect will be good. The special glass point should on no account be used on any other material which would be liable to injure it, and render it unfit for its own particular purpose.

Source - A Handbook of Pyrography or Burnt Wood Etching by Mrs. Maud Maude

Does this wet your appetite for trying to etch on glass?

If so, do get advice on machines made for this purpose rather than damage your wood pyrography machine trying to create a glass etching, though I must admit to being tempted to experiment myself.

Next time:- Themes for burning also another old time wood burning secret.

First Steps In Pyrography a 'Fire Art'. 8

A warm welcome back to

FIRST STEPS IN PYROGRAPHY OR FIRE ART

1. For choice of material to burn upon, the safest and easiest option for wood burning is to purchase your wooden blanks from a pyrographic supplier and then you can be absolutely certain of their quality and suitability for wood burning. A pyrographic supplier will offer you woods such as beech, sycamore, lime and good quality plywood.

2. Another alternative is to buy wood from a dealer that supplies raw timber to furniture makers or wood turners. I was lucky to discover a local woodturning centre where I could purchase woods from a wide selection of timbers. Some of these woods offered a choice of surfaces to burn on, with graining of different densities and widths. Beware of problems that can arise with uneven burning, as the graining changes the strength and rate that your tool burns the surface of the wood. If you are aiming for an even effect it is better to use a close grained and hard wood.

3. Part of the aesthetic appeal of a finished piece of work for me is to see the wood presented in a partially raw state. By this I mean that I have a preference for putting my Fire Art on pieces of wood where the bark is still on the outer edge of the slice or by using wood that has been cut in such a way as to allow by nature of it’s shape, a design to develop from it.

One piece of work that I found very satisfying to do was a bookend. I burned into a piece of Burr Oak with a design from the poem ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’. I took my piece of work into the local Primary School as one of the aids to try and help inspire the children to write their own poetry!

The children were fascinated by the piece of wood itself. So if you are in education of any kind and can use wood as a stimulus for a scientific project or in any other area of the curriculum, please bear in mind how the chance to explore wood as a topic offers a large diversity of learning possibilities.

You might use wood to look at forest sustainability and its importance to wildlife and the surrounding environment. Aspects of science, mathematics and particularly design and technology can be linked to wood and its properties can be used to further children’s knowledge and understanding of the world around them. If you have the resources to be able to fund one or two basic machines for children of perhaps 10 years and above then how about setting up a pyrography section within your arts and crafts club? Of course this must be well supervised and a full risk assessment must be carried out.

4. When we look at wood and its by products, then amazingly and very easily obtainable ordinary paper is a cheap material that can be burned. When I say ordinary I mean that you can burn upon a smooth simple white paper or have a great time experimenting with different thicknesses and types of papers. You might even get interested in making your own paper on which to burn images and patterns.

5.I have experimented burning mainly onto white paper and it is surprising the level of heat required to get subtle sepia tones for a design. When I first put my pyrographic tool upon the paper I was very hesitant thinking that it would go straight up in flames! Why don’t you try it out, start by using your machine at it’s lowest temperature and make sure you paper is laying on a flame resistant surface.

As I have said before the opportunities with pyrography are limitless in more ways than one!

Here are a couple of interesting little excerpts from the bygone book on Burnt Wood Etching that I found. The first refers to the problems of working with unseasoned wood and the second to working with velvet and leather as a material.

Extracted from - Woods For Burning.

1 It is absolutely necessary that the wood be sound, free from knots and well seasoned, particularly the latter, for if it be at all green, the heat of the point will cause its contraction on one side, thus giving the picture a boat shaped appearance, with the chance of its splitting down the centre if an attempt be made to straighten it. If a board should begin to curve from unequal drying, the best remedy is to put it at an early stage into a narrow grooved frame, which will keep it flat, and in course of time it will dry all through.

2. Velvet also is a most satisfactory material to work upon, burning away the pile, but of course exercising judgment in the amount of heat used, it being necessary to leave the groundwork of the material unscorched. The velvet should be fastened by the edges to a board so that it will not “ruck” during the work and the pattern traced through ordinary transfer paper, which can be obtained in several colours, blue, orange, white or black. The hand must be held over not on the velvet while marking the outline, as pressure would cause the colour to come off in the wrong place and ruin the entire surface. Some good effects can also be obtained on leather, but many people object to the very unpleasant odour which arises when heat is applied to the surface.

Source - A Handbook of Pyrography or Burnt Wood Etching by Mrs. Maud Maude

Next Time:- Looking at more exotic materials to burn.
Plus A Burning Secret?

First Steps In Pyrography a 'Fire Art' 7

Welcome to how to create a different textures from

FIRST STEPS IN PYROGRAPHY OR FIRE ART

Also learn about the bygone writings I found in a re-discovered book on burnt wood etching.

1. When using a pyrography tool you cannot apply it in the same way as you would use a drawing pencil, having said this, you do need to grip the tool as you would hold a pencil as this allows better control but beware of touching any metal part.

2. You will definitely gain in experience from practising on scraps of wood and indeed build up your own test woods. It is easy and economical to get hold of reasonable quality plywood from a hardware store for this purpose, however, you do need to be careful not to burn into it too deeply and hit the glue layer which will cause noxious fumes to be given off.

3. Using a pencil draw yourself a grid on the plywood, allowing enough space in each section to practise a texture.

4. You already know that the colour and depth of mark, depends upon the temperature you have your machine set at and the length of time you hold the point on the wood. I would start at the lowest temperature and try out different nibs on the first row of your grid to create a selection of patterns such as :-

a) Hashing - small sections of lines that cross, straight or wavy with a selection of nibs.

b) Dots - made to different depths creating a stipple effect with nibs such as a Janik Ball Point or Spoon Point in a Wire Nib Burner such as that of a Peter Child's machine.

c) Use lines to create a variety of small brick patterns and build up to give the effect of shading. Burn a grid of parallel lines to different degrees, do some in a diagonal pattern and others in a more random way.

Note:- Important. On a piece of plain paper the same size as your test wood draw a replica grid.
Within this paper grid, notate the nibs and temperatures used to create each particular effect. (This is a handy resource to keep and is rather like a trade painters colour chart that will tell you straight away the information required, in this case how to recreate the same textures. Remember to file it somewhere safe). At a later stage you may build up more of these test woods with intricate and superior designs that come with experience.

Returning to our original test wood - On your second row of the grid turn the temperature up slightly and continue making patterns in a similar way. As you begin each new row turn up your temperature to the next level and finally when the highest temperatures have been selected begin to burn deeper gradients into the wood.

You should now have completed a grid test wood that illustrates the selection of grades and assortment of patterns and shapes that can be achieved by using your machine and nibs. After practising regularly you will become more accustomed to your machine and be able to produce a larger variety of imaginative patterns.

I'd like to end this blog with a snippet from the bygone writings found in a rediscovered book about Burnt Wood Etching.

An extract from the section entitled - Woods for Burning.

This is a subject to which a really serious student of Pyrography cannot devote too much attention, if he contemplates a piece of work that is likely to be of some value when completed. The reader will see the truth of this when he remembers that it is absolutely the ground upon which his work will appear, and quite a different matter to the stretched canvas for oil painting, in which the poor quality will in a measure be hidden by the successive coatings of paint. In Pyrographic work, if the wood be unsuitable for the purpose, every stroke will be a failure, and if it be the right kind of wood but unsound, the artists’ labour will be so much waste of time.

Source- A Handbook of Pyrography or Burnt Wood Etching by Mrs. Maud Maude

So after taking those words to heart, my next blog will be looking at some suitable woods for burning and also other materials to add to your range, plus another snippet from this fascinating manual about Pyrography.