Basic Woodburning Strokes and Textures

Background and solid fill patterns

For many areas in a pyrography project we need to completely fill an area with a solid burn.  That area may be one tonal value or a graduated shading.  There are several excellent pen tip stroke patterns that are best suited to solid fill texture work.

Tightly packed fine lines, scrubbie stroke, and touch-and-lift dot patterns are favorite textures to use to create even, smooth coloration.

The sample board, shown on the right, was worked on a 9″ square of birch plywood using the Walnut Hollow Versa-Tool.  Each row shows a different solid fill texture pattern, worked through a low to high temperature setting.

The top row is worked with the universal tip, which is the equivalent to a ball or loop tip pen, and uses tightly packed straight lines.

Row two also uses the universal tip, used slightly angled to the board, in a scrubbie -quickly back-and-forth – doodle line.
Row three was worked with Walnut Hollow wide, round pen tip and uses the scrubbie stroke.
For the forth line of solid fill texture I used the cone pen tip, again with tightly, packed fine line work.
The last row is worked one square with each tip for a touch-and-lift dot pattern.

The floral pattern on this Walnut Hollow Versa-Tool practice board comes in our Wood Flowers Pattern Pack.

A fun sample of solid fill work is our Medallion Dragon board, worked from my Medallion Dragons Pattern Pack, available at ArtDesignStudio.com.   The background is worked on birch plywood using a tightly packed scrubbie stroke with the spear shader and on a medium-high temperature setting.  The solid fill areas inside of the dragon’s body uses the cross hatching line pattern worked with a curved shader on a medium temperature setting to evenly fill these areas with sepia tones.  The shaded wings also is worked on a medium temperature setting with a looped tip pen and the scrubbie stroke.