pyrography

LOOP TIP PEN

 

 

 

For outlining, wide line shading and texture work I use my loop-tip pen, also called a standard writing tip. By holding this pen in an upright position, 90 degrees from the working surface, fine detail lines can be pulled. To create wider lines in your texturing drop your grip to about 45 degrees from the wood. This lets the side of the wire touch the board giving you more metal to wood contact.

This classic burning pen tip is still a mainstay for any pyrography tool kit. The tightly bent loop at the point of the tip creates even, medium width lines and carries the heat for your burning unit well.

As shown below, in the far left sample square of this practice board, the loop tip pen makes a
thick to thin line as you move the tip from its center point to the sides of the loop.

Square two shows the loop tip pens dot pattern, also called pointillism. The tip of the pen,
touched and lifted from the wood, leaves a small, black oval shape to the burn.
Scrubbie strikes, shown third, is a continuous curling or meandering line the fills an area
with textured shading. The thick and thin effect from this pen tip
adds to the texture of the scrubbie stroke.

The last, right hand, square is worked with the loop tip pen at a 90 degrees to the wood to
burn the thinnest, fine lines as possible. By adding new layers of burned lines over previous work,
each layer worked in a new direction, you can build up the burning into every deepening tonal values.

FINE LINE WORK
Using any temperature setting and holding the tip upright to the wood you can make even lines for both shading, accent, and outline work. The higher you set your temperature the darker and thicker the lines will burn. In the photo, top right, the fine lines work has been used to shade under the roof overhang. By re-burning the lines the tonal value can be darkened.

TEXTURE PATTERNS
Any texture pattern can be created using a loop writing tip. Simple random curls, tightly packed circles, and even cross hatched patterns are easily made using the fine line made by the loop. The more tightly you pack any texture line the denser and therefore darker tonal value that area will have.

SOLID FILL
At high temperature settings you can use the loop writing tip to create tightly packed small ovals to bring an area into your darkest tonal value. In the bottom right photo this touch-and-lift stroke was used to establish the darkest shadows for the leaves.

 

BALL-TIP PEN

 

 

 

This micro writing tools is manufactured using thinner wire and a tighter bend at the tip, or as in this sample, a small ball welded to the tip of the end. This means that little metal comes into direct contact to the working surface and gives very fine detailing lines. Very fine dense textures can be layered using this tool to burn an area into an even smooth tonal value.

Ball tipped pens comes in a variety of diameters with larger diameter tips creating wider lines and smaller diameters making thinner lines. They have three primary purposes – outlining, scrubbie shading, and solid fill work.

This small ball tipped pen makes a consistently even line or dot no matter
how you position the angle of the pen to the wood. The thinness of your
burned line remains the same throughout the outline strokes, dot patterns,
scrubbie strokes, or cross-hatching work.

OUTLINING AND WRITING

You can outline all of your pattern lines to give your pyrography a cartoon or coloring book effect. Lightly outline the pattern using a cool temperature setting to set your lines. Next work each area with your chosen style or texture. When all of the shaded texture work is done re-work the outlines at a medium-high to high setting. Vary the width of the lines to give your outlining more interest.
Not every project needs to be outlined. If you have worked your project using shaded tonal values, outlines will not be needed to visually separate one area from another. No object in nature comes with outlines, so for landscape scenes or animal portrait use as few accent lines as possible.

SCRUBBIE SHADING

Small, short scrubbie strokes can be made with a ball tipped pen to create evenly graduated shading for your elements. Scrubbies are made in an slow, even back-and-forth motion or in a tight, random circular movement. Work several layers of scrubbie strokes to deepen the tonal value in any area.

FILL TEXTURES

Medium to medium-high temperature settings and a touch-and-lift stroke, using a ball tip pen will create your solid fill areas. The more tightly you pack the small, dark dots made by this texture the darker your area will be.

Avoid using a high temperature setting for this type of fill texture. To hot a setting will cause the dots to bleed or halo into the adjacent areas of the design.

 

SPEAR SHADER

 

 

 

 

 

 

The curved-edge spear shader has a thinner metal body than the spoon shader, which allows it to create darker tonal values at lower temperature setting. The curved side lets you pull thin, even lines without a dark starting point spot as often happens with a ball tipped pen when you work the pen on its point.

 

The spear shader is used on all of its edges, each creating a different thickness or
intensity of the stroke. Pull the spear shader with the point flat to the
wood and you get a thick line.   Lift the shader to work just the point or
angle the shader so that you are burning along one of its curved edges and
you create an extremely fine line.
The touch and lift dot pattern of pointillism with this tip burns small triangles.
For the far right sample board square the side of the spear shader is
pulled so that the wide edge of the shader touches the board,
creating a graduated, unlined shading effect.

LONG SHADING STROKES
Using the wide point in the curve – the belly – you can pull long, wide shading strokes. In the right hand, top photo those long strokes are used to create the dips and ruts in an old country road. This is a touch-and-slowly-pull movement.

FINE LINE WORK
Leading with the point of the curved-edge shader and rolling into the belly creates extremely thin, fine burnt lines. On low temperature settings these lines are barely visible, on hotter setting the lines are perfect for engraving, cross hatching, and accent work.

TRIANGLES
Because the curved-edge spear shader carries a large amount of heat, the tip of this shader can create small, evenly sized triangles in your designs. Set your thermostat on a medium or medium-hot setting and use a touch-and-lift stroke. The lower you hold the shader to the wood the larger your triangle will be.

 

SPOON SHADER PEN

 

 

 

This small curved shader creates a wide path of smooth tonal values, excellent for general shading within your design. I find that a low-medium temperature and a circular motion quickly bring an area up to its color tone without obvious pen strokes or lines..

Spoon shaders have a flatten surface that may be rounded or pointed at the tip. The shaft of the tip is bent so that the bowl of the spoon lies against the wood when holding it in a general pencil hand grip position. This style tends to have a thicker metal tip than curved shader pen tips, so they may require a slightly higher temperature setting during use.

Spoon shader lines have graduated tonal values to their edges, not crisp,
hard finishing lines. The spoon belly of the tip burns the center of the line to a
slightly darker tonal value then where it rolls upward, away form the wood, along its side edges.
Use for pointillism the spoon shader leaves a small square or triangle shape blur of burning.
As with the dot pattern, a scrubbie stroke worked with the spoon shader is undefined.
This is a great way to fill in or deepen small areas in your project
where you want to even out another burned layer of work.
Pulling your spoon shader in fine lines, alternating direction works
a soft cross-hatch pattern to the wood. Because so little of the spoon area actually touches the wood,
this stroke pattern can accent the grain line of your board.

 

SCRUBBIE SHADING

By setting the temperature setting to medium or medium-high, you can lay the flat of the shader against the wood and pull short, small touch strokes to create the scrubbie shading effect.

Lift the shader slightly to work the tip closer to the point or curved edge allows you to move in a random, circular motion for even shading. Add layers of shading strokes to graduate an area from a pale to dark tonal value.

LEADING EDGE LINES

The shader can be first laid flat against the wood and pulled in a long, straight line to give the general shape of the boards.

A second stroke can now be laid over the long, pull stroke to separate each board with a fine, thin, slightly darker tone by leaning the spoon shader’s side edge into the wood.

 

Before I begin today’s basic lessons and technique to Pyrography, I thought I would direct my intermediate and advanced wood burners to one the projects shown that is already posted here at LSIrish.com.   Celtic Knot Postage Stamp project is five pages long, with free wood burning patterns.

 

PRACTICE BOARD

This is a practice board burning using the same burn stroke patterns worked through each pen tip of my Creative Woodburner Tool.

The stroke styles are from left to right: fine lines, dot patterns, scrubbie patterns, and cross-hatching.

The tool tips used from top row to bottom row: loop tip, ball tip, spear shader, and spoon shader.
My practice board is worked on 12” x 12” x 1/4” birch plywood and divided into 1” squares for each of the burned samples. I can refer to this board at any time during a burning session to determine which tool tip and which burning stroke will work best on my project.

Since my practice board is large in physical size I can experiment and explore new textures, burning strokes, and ways to treat my detailing before I actually do the work on the main project. I can practice and I can make mistakes as I learn without worry of damaging my primary work.

For more information on Practice Boards please visit these pages – Pyrography Practice Boards.

 

 

WOOD BURNING SYSTEMS

A wood burning is created with five elements – the wood burning unit, the pen tips, the media on which you are working, the pattern or design you will burn, and the art style you will use to create the design. Lets look at the pyrography systems first.
There are three styles of wood burning units: one-temperature tools, rheostat-controlled tools, and variable-temperature tools. Which you chose depends on both your interest in this craft, your pyrography budget, and the media on which you will be working.

ONE-TEMPERATURE

Walnut Hollow Introductory Wood Burning Tool

Shown above is a regular one-temperature tool the reaches around 950 degrees.

The one temperature tool has the heating elements inside of the handle of the tool and comes with a variety of brass interchangeable tips that are placed in a threaded receptacle at the end of the tool. Tool tips for this style of burning system include the universal tip, calligraphy tip, cone tip, large ball shader and large flat shading tip.

Once plugged into an electrical outlet the tool quickly reaches an even but high temperature so the tonal value work in your project must be controlled through the textures or strokes that you use and the speed of the stroke. Very pale tonal values are burned by using a light pressure to the tip against the wood and moving the tool tip quickly through the burn stroke. Darker tones use a medium pressure and slower motion.

Walnut Hollow Creative Woodburner Detailer

The one-temperature tool on the right has a low-temperature setting around 750 degrees.

One temperature burning tools are inexpensive, readily available at your local craft or hobby store and excellent for first time wood burners to give our craft a try. I began wood burning twenty-five years ago with this style of tool. Several years ago I purchased a new one temperature unit so I would have two tools on the table, each with a different tip, ready for use in my projects. Today, although I now have two variable temperature systems I still find that I use my one temperature system on a regular bases.

A low-temperature, one-temperature tool is perfect for your leather, and cloth burnings.

A full range of tonal values can be burned using a one temperature tool. Burn your pale tones as the tool tip begins to heat and save your darkest tones for when the tool tip has reached its full setting.

 

RHEOSTAT TOOLS

Walnut Hollow Versa-Tool

The rheostat control on the cord of this burning unit allows you to adjust the heat settings from very pale, cool tonal value burns to the purest hot black lines.

This inexpensive beginner’s wood burning pen has a rheostat on the power cord which allows you to control the temperature of the burning tip. It allows you full control over the pen tip’s heat setting.
The sample rheostat burner, shown below, uses the same interchangeable brass tips as the one temperature tool.

The screw-in brass burning tips shown here fit both the one-temperature burning unit and the rheostat unit. From left to right are shown a calligraphy tip, cone tip, flat shader tip, large ball tip, and a texturing tip. The universal writing tip is inserted in the burning pen.
Brass tips can take quite a bit of pressure and abuse at very hot temperature settings which make them perfect for wide, thick black line work on heavily sapped woods as white pine, sugar pine and cedar.

The tonal values in the practice board are worked by controlling the pressure of the tip on the wood, the speed of the stroke, and the density of the lines burned as well as by adjusting the rheostat temperature settings.

VARIABLE-TEMPERATURE

Walnut Hollow Creative Tool

For the projects and practice board shown in this book I am using the Walnut Hollow Creative tool – a variable-temperature tool with four interchangeable pen tips.

Variable temperature systems have a dial thermostat that allows you to control how cool or hot your tip is. You can adjust the temperature setting quickly making it easy to control your tonal values in your project. This style has two types of pens – the fixed tip pen where the tip is permanently set in the hand grip and the interchangeable pen where different wire tips can be used with the hand grip.

Because the temperature controls for variable-temperature tools are located in an independent case from the burning pen, the pen handle shapes are much thinner, light-weight, and easier to grip for long term burnings. A long cord from the control unit to the pen gives you free movement of your pen as you work your burning strokes.

 

HIGHEST QUALITY WOOD BURNING TOOLS

The high end, high quality wood burning units available to our craft have fixed-tip pens that transfer the heat of the unit through the pen tip uniformly.  There is little or no variation in temperature burn settings between one project and the next.  So when you need a medium-high tonal value of 5 you can rely on these units to give you the same tonal value time after time.

My tow favorites are shown below and both have been put through extremely hard use for over ten years.  Both have preformed outstandingly.

Colwood Detailer

The second high-quality wood burning unit that I purchased was a Colwood Detailer.  This one burning tool has been used to create over ten years of pyrography pleasure and in the writing of five pyrography books.  I highly recommend any Colwood product.

 

Optima 1 Dual Pen System
The third high-quality tool that I added to my kit is the Optima 1 with a duel pen system.  This unit has given years of hard work and was used in my latest two publications of pyrography. You can’t go wrong with an Optima.

I will note here that my first high-quality wood burning tool was a RazorTip that I used in the creation of my first pyrography book, The Great Book of Wood Burning.  Personally, I find that RazorTip’s pen tip wires are not as durable or long lasting as those of the Optima or Colwood units.