Pyrography

Tonal Values Add Depth to Your Project

Tonal Values in all crafts – wood carving, wood burning, colored pencils, and painting

If really is amazing the odd moments that you remember and that affect the rest of your life.

Mom and I had been to a doctor in lower, southern Baltimore that day.  She decided to take the long way home as it was a wonderful country ride and it avoided the “new” interstate highway.  I must have been less than 10 as my younger sister was not yet born, so about 1958 to 1962.

It was all rural dairy farm land at that time, Maryland’s main agriculture for the Piedmont area.  Late afternoon, driving into the setting sun, we came to a T intersection just above the little town of Olney.  Mom just stopped at the cross road and looked out across the farm land in front of us.  We just sat there for the longest time.

In front of us was a small hill of pasture land with an old wire fence.  On top of the rise was a dilapidated barn, leaning slightly, surrounded by young weed-tree saplings.  The silo was long gone, but the old, rusting tractor still sat by the side of the barn.

“See that fallen down barn … look at where the roof has caved in and where the windows and doors are long gone.  Do you see the light coming into the inside of barn from the holes in the roof?  Look at how black the inside of the barn is but how bright the sunlight patches are where they hit the floor. They are brilliant white”

“Do you see the locust trees growing inside the barn, how their trunks and branches are white in sunlight coming into the barn, then disappear into the black shadows, but come out of the roof looking white again?”

‘Notice how you can’t really see anything inside the barn where the black shadows are but you can see all the details where the sunlight has come through the roof.  Now THAT’S a painting!!!!”

It wasn’t the barn; it wasn’t the old tractor; it wasn’t even all the colors of the field, trees, and red barn paint that she saw … it was the light and shadows.  Mom was an accomplished artist who, as I, started out as an oil painter and later supported her family from her craft business income.

I passed that barn many, many times later in my life when I traveled from the University of Maryland to home.  Over the years it slowly settled into just a pile of rotten wood planks, and eventually was lost under those weed-trees that had grown to full size.   Every time I came to that T intersection, like Mom, I stopped and looked and pondered the bright sunshine highlights and the black afternoon shadows – the tonal values of that rustic landscape.

So in working on a new update for my blog and pattern site I was compiling a series of images of some of my work, shown above.   When I put them together as one image – wood carvings, wood burnings, colored pencils, tutorials, and oil painting – I realized they all had one thing in common.  Every project, for me, is about tonal value and how to capture those bright white highlights and blackest shadows.

Art is about the white eyelashes of that cow lying over the blackest shadow inside her ear.  Its about cutting a deep undercut to free the sides of the fence from the wood to cast a dark shadow.  Its about working the under painting of a white flower so that the insides of the petal are starkly contrasted to the white roll overs of the petal’s edge.

For me, art is about tonal values, and it is because of that one little, brief moment of my Mom sharing her love of just seeing the world through those highlights and shadows.

Thanks for letting me sharing this memory!

~Lora
Tonal Value Sepia Worksheet
Wood Burning Sepia Values
Mapping Your Pyrography Pattern
Contrasting Tonal Values
Light and Shadows in Pyrography
 

 

 

 

 

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Wood Spirit Walking Stick Carving

June 8th, 2023  My free Wood Spirit.pdf has been updated!  Please download Version 2.0 with the link below.

Cane Carving

Walking Sticks and canes are a favorite wood carving project for both beginning carvers to the most advanced woodworker. This free, online project by Lora Irish will take you through the basic techniques used in choosing your wood staffs and sticks, wood carving cane toppers, cane construction, and finishing used for walking sticks. Learn how to use wood burning in your cane carving to clean the joint lines of your carving and add fine details. Explore the different steps you can use to add bright, bold painted coloring.

 

 

Enjoy our latest freebie:
An Ancient Love Story – Wood Spirits V2
19 pages that include the classic mythology of this beloved icon, exploration of the different styles of Wood Spirits and Greenmen, and 14 ideas and patterns to use in your Wood Spirit carvings.

 

 

Let Your Cane Tell a Story

Cane toppers can be carved to show a favorite item, hobby, or occupation.  They can also tell a story.  This cane topper pattern shows the story of a large fish, being hugged by a turtle, swallowing a medium fish that is being hugged by a frog and is swallowing a small gator that is eating a mouse.  Thus its name “Food Chain”.

Click on the image above for a full-sized, printable pattern.

 

Free Online Tutorials

Wood Carving Canes, Walking Sticks, Wizard Wands

Wood Carving Walking Sticks, Introduction

Wood Carving Walking Sticks – Adding Extras

Wood Carving Walking Sticks – Common Tree Specieshow to carve canes

Wood Carving Walking Sticks – Harvesting

Wood Carving Walking Sticks, Gluing Your Joint

Wood Carving Walking Sticks, How to Clamp Your Cane Handle

Wood Carving Walking Sticks, Working with Bamboo

Harvesting Saplings for Cane Carving

Free Mountain Man Cane Carving Pattern

Wood Carving Walking Sticks, How to Join Your Cane Handle

Wood Spirit Cane and Walking Stick Carving

Twistie Stick Snake Cane Carving, Day 4

Twistie Stick Snake Cane Carving, Day 3

Twistie Stick Snake Cane Carving, Day 2

Twistie Stick Snake Carving Free Project

Walking Stick and Cane Handle Joinery

Wood Carving Walking Sticks

Canes and Walking Sticks

Carving the Wood Spirit

Carving the Wood Spirit Face

Cane and walking stick wood carving

 

Canes, Walking Sticks & Wizard Wands By Lora S. Irish

Our copyright allows you to sell your finished items worked with any
pattern from ArtDesignsStudio.com, Lora’s pattern website.  You can buy the complete pattern pack, carve or burn your heart out, and sell them all at your local craft fair.

48 patterns, with 3 to 5 sided views for each designs, for easy tracing and easy carving. 40 carved, and colored finished samples to guide you in your cane carving project. Patterns include Wood Spirits, Wizards, Dragons, Kings, Mushroom Spirits, Fish, Mark Twain, The Judge, Christmas Caroler, Viking Warrior, The Country Singer, and much, much more.

Our biggest pattern pack yet! Use any design for your cane carving, walking stick toppers, talking sticks, or Wizard Wands. Create smaller carvings for key chain lanyards, and flower pot companions. Another Art Designs Studio, A Lora Irish exclusive!

Only $10.95

Patterns By Download! — Fast! – Easy! – Convenient!
Download Today — And Be Carving Tonight!

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Wood Carving, Pyrography Pattern Collection

On sale through Dec. 31st, 2022
For a limited time get a free bonus book, signed by Lora Irish with your
Thumb Drive order at ArtDesignsStudio.com
This week’s book is the Great Book of Wood Burning – Edition 2, a $22 value.

Wood Carving, Pyrography Pattern Collection Read More »

Pyrography Styles – Simple Outlining

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

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 !!!!

 

Pyrography Styles – Pointillism Read More »

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