September 2021

Pyrography Styles – Simple Outlining

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Simply outlining the pattern is often our very first project in pyrography wood burning.  After decades as a pyrographer I still use this art style on many projects because of the clear, crisp impact you get by just following the tracing lines.  Also called line art, outlining is often used in engraving, etching, woodcut and lithography.  For more please read this great Wikipedia article.

Learn more about art styles that can be used in your pyrography wood burning – Pyrography Style Handbook is available at Amazon.com.

 

Very simple, very flat, and very two dimensional, a simple outline conveys your image without details or shading.

This dragon face is worked on a 3″ leather key fob.  Since he is both well detailed and worked in a very small space,  simple outlining is the perfect choice.

Please learn more about burning on leather, here at LSIrish.com.

 

 

 

The leather burned purse and the birch plywood burn, above, both use the same pattern from our pattern pack – Dragon Medallions.  It is the lack of shading and extra detailing in the leather purse image that makes the dragon a stronger design then the wood version.  The wood version almost has too much to see compared to the clean, crisp image on the leather.

 

Wood burning, especially on paper mache, leaves a physical impression in the media.  Santa’s outline literally drops down into the surface of this paper mache box.  The trough that comes from a simple outline stroke can also be used as a damn.  Here it works to stop the application of the acrylic craft paints from spreading into the background area.

Note on this little Santa, the background is not burned totally black.  Instead it is filled with the words, “ho ho ho!”

For more holiday and Christmas ideas to use with your simple outline style of wood burning, visit our holiday pattern category in our pattern site, ArtDesignsStudio.com.

I have one more fun simple outline styled work to share with you.  Its a Celtic deer design.  While the above samples all use carefully controlled, uniform thickness lines, this hart uses thick and thin lines.  As you move through the pattern make some areas of the line width thick then taper back to very thin.  This adds a little dimension without losing the crisp, line art effect.

 

 

LSIrish.com is an affiliate of Amazon.com – Pyrography Style Handbook

Here’s a fun patterns for the twisted tail Celtic Hart. Click on the image below to save to your desktop.

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Pyrography Styles – Pointillism

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Pyrography is so much more than just outlining your pattern and burning the background to black.  Any art style can be created, using a wood burning tool and your selected pen tips.

Pyrography Styles Handbook by Lora S. Irish, at Amazon.com

Let’s look at Pointillism in this day’s post.

Pointillism, also called Neo-Impressionism, was introduced in the late 1880’s by Georges Seurat and Paul Signac.  There is a great Wiki article on this painting style – read more here.

Pointillism began as a new way to blend colors on a canvas.  Instead of blending two or three colors to create a new color, small, tightly packed dots of the two colors visually created the new third color.  So instead of mixing and blending cadmium yellow with ultramarine blue to create a medium green, a very small dot of yellow was painted next to a small dot of blue.  Your eye then blends the two color dots into the new green tone.

To learn more about Pyrography art styles, please visit Amazon.com for your copy of Pyrography Styles Handbook by Lora S. Irish – Your comprehensive guide to the 7 major styles of woodburning: crosshatching, realism, pointillism, shaded drawing, engraving, silhouette, and texture painting.  LSIrish.com is an affiliate of Amazon.

Watercolor Painting your Wood BurningPlease see our article, Color Wheel or Who is Roy G. Biv?

If a yellow-green was wanted the artist would paint two small dots of yellow next to the blue.  If you wanted a darker green, then the artist used two touching dots of blue with one dot of yellow.

The idea of using dots instead of strokes directly impacts how we as wood burning artists can create a pyrography image.  Where Neo-Impressionists used color dots, we wood burners use heat setting for pale, medium and dark dots, and density to create pale tonal area to almost solid black areas in our work.

 

 

 

Celtic knot pyrography wood burning patternFor more reading on pyrography and wood burning techniques, please see our pyrography navigation menu.

This Celtic Bird Postage Stamp burning is also worked in the Pointillism style, and available for free here at LSIrish.com.  This post includes the free Celtic Bird postage stamp pattern.

 

 

 

 

The cougar pyrography project will take you, step-by-step, through a fun, pointillism work.

This entire design is worked using only a small dash stroke made with a ball tip or loop tip pen.  How hot the temperature setting is and how densely you pack those dash strokes gives the sepia value range – pale areas, medium toned areas, and black areas.

This post included the free Cougar pattern and is one of the step-by-step projects included in Pyrography Style Handbook.

Posting tomorrow on Silhouette style burnings !!!!

 

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