Quarantine day 50

Today I thought I'd talk about my other passion: Wood burning. Or the official name: pyrography.

Let me start by saying, I cannot draw. But, for some reason, I am pretty good at burning images onto wood.
The first time I ever tried it, I was in middle school or something. I had a teacher who I liked very much, and I wanted to make her a present.
For whatever reason, we happened to have one of those single temperature old-school wood burning tools. I'm sure you've all seen them:

We also always had random pieces of wood lying around the shop down in the basement. I'm not sure what put the idea into my head, but I decided to try a wood burning. I chose a unicorn as my subject. The picture I found was cool, I'll always remember it: it was a full-body unicorn, with his right leg raised. He was heavily muscled, with a cool spiral horn mounted his forehead and a flowing mane.

Using a technique I still use, I covered the backside of the picture completely with pencil. Then, on the freshly-sanded piece of wood, I placed the picture and traced the main outlines.

That was all I needed. It was then I discovered I had a knack for shading. That's what creates the illusion of being a really good artist. It's all in the shading.
The unicorn turned out amazingly, much better than I had ever expected. My teacher loved it. I still remember that she asked me twice, "You did this?" because she was surprised by the result of my work. Frankly, so was I.

I didn't take a picture of that first burning. I wish I had, but back then a camera wasn't always in your pocket.

It would be more than twenty-five years later when I tried wood burning again. The cougar at the top of this post was one of the first ones I did. It was done with a single-temperature burner. I have since grown to a more sophisticated system that allows various temperatures, which allows for different levels of shade. With a single-temperature pen, you have to achieve that with lighter or harder pressure and faster or slower strokes.

I had been doing the burnings for a while after I picked the hobby up again. I managed to sell quite a few, too. But it's been a while since I've done one. They take a while to do, and wreak havoc on my hands.

It would have been a good thing to do during lockdown, but I didn't have any wood. Oh, well.

I hope you enjoyed the pictures. The one of koala is done with a specking effect--just thousands of little dots. I only did two of these because they take forever!  

Stay safe. Stay inside. 💓