Pyrography How to Guide

A continuation from Sergey’s blog:

Step One:



Before you begin working on your piece it’s important to lightly sand the wood. This prevents you from getting any splinters while you’re working on the piece as well as preventing the small loose pieces of wood from coming up and burning while you’re working on your piece.

Step Two:



The next step is to draw out your design or image. The drawing itself does not have to be complicated, and in fact it makes it a bit easier if you just have the general shapes. The drawing is strictly used as a guide to follow along with as you burn the design in.

Step Three:



Now comes the fun part! I find it useful when burning in the design to actually outline the shapes before you begin the burning process. This prevents your lines from disappearing and also gives you a nice feel for the wood, since depending on the variety of wood they all burn a bit different.

Below are the remainder of the images so you can see the process itself. As for the technique itself, everyone does it a little different and it’s important to find out which way is comfortable for you.



For the fur I find a cross hatch works well with the finer fur....



...and longer downward strokes work well for the shaggy fur of the bison.



As you can see by varying up the different strokes shows the varying changed in the bison’s fur. The most important rule with pyrography, is to just play around with it! It’s supposed to be a fun hobby not a chore.



For grass I find simple strokes varying in pressure give the grass a nice textured look



Always remember to include some sort of background if you’re doing a full piece image



And an hour or two later this is the finished product. I may go back and darken up parts of the prairie to give the piece more depth, but for now I’m calling this piece complete.

So there you have it a simple “how to” for pyrography! If you have any questions feel free to leave a comment on here, or you can email me at artistmeg@yahoo.ca


~Meg