WHAT IS WOOD BURNING?

Pyrography, or wood burning, comes from the Greek words pyr (fire) and graphos (writing), literally meaning "writing with fire." Wood Burning is the art of exactly that, burning designs, words, or images onto wood by hand with fire, smoke, and heat.

I get asked frequently how wood burning is done, and what my process is. Well worry no longer, as I will be breaking it down for you readers! To kick things off, I lock in my design, whether it be on an ipad digitally, sketchpad, or picking out the perfect reference photo. Once I feel confident in my image, I will sketch it right onto the wood itself, occasionally using gridding to help lock in proportions of large pieces. I will completely sketch only the outline, similar to a tattoo outline before the artist starts their tattoo work.

Then the fun begins. I turn on my Razertip SL3 wood burner unit, and use the Colwood Ball Tip size 1 to burn in the outline of my piece permanently onto the wood.

Once that outline is burned in, I will shade on the fly! I found over-drawing the initial sketch on the wood led to burning over graphite areas making it appear a little muddy, or the wood being filled with too many eraser marks that were hard to remove. So as my wood burning confidence grew, I realized how much less I had to draw than expected.

That led to the shading becoming my favorite part of wood burning! I utilize many tips here, from the Colwood Small Round and Tight Round to the Rounded Heel, Shading, and most frequently, the FT-C tip. This is where I really get to play. I work on the darkest areas first, making sure to lock in my true blacks throughout the piece and establish what to base the rest of my shading off of value-wise. Then I work in reverse, shading lightly and slowly building towards black, layer by layer. I find the slow building of layers to be the best way to achieve smooth transitions throughout the gradient, making it look seamless, even if time consuming.

Last but not least, if the piece calls for it, I will take a small electric engraver and etch out a little bit of the wood to create some serious highlights or shine to any needed elements and help the piece pop. Then it’s off to get varnished and framed before being ready for the world.