The Wood-burned Coffee Table (Deer & Covered Bridge)

This table, along with the blanket chests I'll be spotlighting a bit later, shows off the work Farmer Dave and I do together. It's pretty straight-forward: I burn the panel, Dave builds the table...

...and what a table! Dave fashioned this out of oak and even a cursory inspection reveals how exacting Dave can be. It's flawless...



This table measures 37"x19"x19", is priced at $475, and is available through Painting With Fire (mudcatz@hotmail.com).

Wooden Ships: "The Atlantic" (Farmer Dave)

For as long as I've known him (almost 20 years), Farmer Dave has built boats. Boats smaller than your hand. Boats as large as your sofa. With Maine's famous maritime history, nautical themes have never been farther away than our wood piles. This, a boat Dave has done periodically almost as long as we've known each other, is one of Dave's most popular renderings...

"The Atlantic"

"Winner of the 1905 Kaiser's Cup.

Built in 1903, the sleek, steel-hulled Atlantic not only won the prestigious trans-Atlantic race, she set a record, unbeaten until 1997, of 12 days, 4 hours, and 1 minute. Powered by a steam auxiliary engine, she sported a spcial low-drag propeller and folding funnel, both of which were removed for racing.

Measuring 185 feet long, with 3 towering masts, she was an impressive sight along the east coast as she cruised. Eventually she became impossible to keep up and came to rest as a dying hulk in a small New Jersey harbor."

Dave's rendering is a bit smaller (41"x41"x5"), though in front of you, it's still an expansive undertaking, with a painstaking detail.



Each one of these knots is hand-tied. Farmer Dave, who has large, fairly arthritic hands, will spend hours upon hours tying these lines, which has always struck me as an impressive display of endurance. Dave refuses to "cheat," determined that all the details measure up to his satisfaction...


This amazing ship is available through Painting With Fire, for $475. Please direct any inquiries to me, Scott, at mudcatz@hotmail.com .

Wooden Novelties: Farmer Dave

Today I get to show off some of my buddy, Farmer Dave's wooden novelties. As subsequent posts will show, Dave is a remarkable and exacting woodworker. Dave all but lives out of his workshop, a rustic and well-equipped workspace set back in the trees. Farmer Dave don't get out much, electing to live way back in the woods, back where the men are men and the livestock are nervous...

Farmer Dave sells all his novelties. All inquiries of the items listed below may be addressed through me, Scott, at "mudcatz(at)hotmail(dot)com."

With so much of our business done on Maine's scenic coastline, it is only fitting that nautical themes show up repeatedly in our work. Dave does wonderful work with miniature sailing vessels. This, his "small boat," measures 16"x16"x5" and lists @ $125.



His Shipwheel Picture Frame is oak and 8". It is marked @ $20 ea.



Farmer Dave's birdhouses have become famous throughout northern New England. These two examples, which utilize reclaimed materials, are styles that Dave struggles to keep in stock...

Welcome Birdhouse, 10 1/2"x6"x6"; $15



Delta Birdhouse, 10 1/4"x6 1/2"x6 1/2"; $10



Among Farmer Dave's more popular items are his single-compartment jewelry boxes. Among them are the Large Lobster Box (12"x5 1/2"; $35)...



and the Small Lobster Box (7 1/4" x 5 1/2" ; $15)



With Christmas fast approaching, Farmer Dave's been finding orders for toy items have been keeping him very busy. When I was last up his way, his workshop looked like it belonged at the North Pole. He has garnered a loyal clientele through the years that find these to be terrific stocking-stuffers, with a fair dose of nostalgia thrown in...

This Bulldozer measures 6" x 4" x 3" and is priced @ $10 ea.



The Tractor is 7"x4"x4" and is also $10 ea.



The Tugboat is 12"x5"x5"; $19.50




While future posts will display a fair more intricate side to Dave's work, I have always been fond of the simple elegance of his maple cutting boards.

Cutting Board, 13 1/4"x6 1/2"; $18



Apple Cutting Board, 12"x9"; $27.50



Dave's "Honey-Do Hammer" (10"x5 1/2"; $5) remains a locally-popular item...



...And Dave's "Lobster Trap" (3 1/2"x4"x5"; $15)...



...comes with its own Maine lobster...




And still the best is yet to come...

Portland Waterfront, 1901

"Portland Waterfront, 1901"

Scott Antworth, 2009

41" x 29"

Available through www.woodstogoods.com

Bio of a Wood-Burning: "Portland Waterfront, 1901," Final Sessions

I had been optimistic that I could wrap this piece with just one more (protracted) work session. As it happened, it took two. While I expect it to be a norm for many artists, I know that (for me), the closer I get to the conclusion of a piece in which I've invested so many hours, the more anxious I am to see it finally come to closure, to see it real and complete.

With as many hours that have been spent burning the smaller details, we have been working around a large area of the surface space. Comparatively speaking, much of this space (the broad swath of cobblestoned Commercial Street) comes together more quickly than the more intensive areas that surround it. The drawback to this is that it can be a very tedious process: cobblestone after cobblestone, after cobblestone... To combat what is often the more boring hours of this process, I generally burn "sections" of the street, then turn my attentions elsewhere, returning to the cobblestones later in the session or the next day.

The cobblestones detailed here are very typical of the stones making up the foreground. The deeper we go in this image (i.e. the farther away it appears from the observer), I tend to soften and blend the details, lending itself to achieving the illusion of perceptual distance.



As I mentioned in my last post, one of the greatest charms of working such a highly-detailed piece as this is that it grants a lot of freedom to allow your imagination to play. When I am burning this particular theme, the foreground figures aren't even usually conceived until well after work has begun. I figure they'll announce themselves the closer I get to that area of the surface. This sailor with his seabag, for example, only occurred to me minutes before I began sketching him--with the burner.


While I try to keep figures like these unique to each piece (which is why, as often as I've burned this Portland Waterfront scene, they are always one-of-a-kind), this fish-monger has made repeated appearances. The last time I burned this theme, she was much farther down the street, pushing that barrow of fish. This time around, it seemed only just two allow her a moment to wipe her brow...


With this Portland Waterfront scene, my last session is always dedicated to laying in all the ship rigging and powerlines, then reviewing, inch by inch, the entire burn. Touch-up lines and shades are laid in and the rougher edges between some of the figures and their background as resolved.



In reaching the fruition towards which we've worked all week, I often find, coupled with the charge of anticipated conclusion, the slightest strain of sadness. This exercise is almost over, and with it the excitement that is particular to every individual piece. The initial vision for the piece has only been a framework to let our imaginations repeatedly play. There have been moments, sown into those long hours, that it has felt as if we've been riding the very spark of creation...

Bio of a Wood-Burning: "Portland Waterfront, 1901", Days 3-6

If it is true that "the demon is in the detail," then this wood-burning has always ranked as one of the more hellish. What gives this piece its magic are its many small details. There's a lot going on here and having them invent themselves as we proceed is one of the many reasons this craft can be so addictive.

The 4 days which constitute this post were spent with precisely these details. These are as varied as getting the windows in proper perspective or burning in a horse-drawn carriage at a scale so small it will prove all but invisible in the final piece. When it comes to this stage of things, I generally just "pick an area" and get busy, working it until it's time to move elsewhere...or as inspiration allows.


With a piece as detailed as Portland Waterfront, 1901, often as not my pre-sketching tends to be far more detailed than, say, if I were doing a wildlife piece. The above photo details a section that is actually quite small (the bow of this boat is little larger than my thumbnail), representing an area at roughly center. The windows of the building at the right...


...provide a decent example of how these windows are laid out individually. When working at a scale that small, I have found it helpful to burn the individual panes of windowglass, forming the woodwork from unburnt slivers rather than burning their specific outlines.

The charm of attempting a piece like this one is that it allows for plenty of space to let your imagination run free. As often as I have burned the Portland Waterfront, 1901 theme, there are so many elements that become unique to each piece. They announce their intentions as work progresses. I purposefully leave large sections of the panel "un-planned" when I begin this burned, just to guarantee many opportunities to "invent as I go."

With so many small details ("events"), I often catch myself wondering if, when this piece is hanging in someone's living room, how long will it be before they realize the figure of this woman is reflected in the storefront window...


...or that the little dog is peeing on the cargo container behind the man with the newspaper...?



Through this stage of the wood-burning, the work sessions get behind us quickly as the small details emerge, defining the piece...









At first glance, there appears to be quite a bit left to this piece, here at the end of 6 days' work. I am anxious to get back to this panel tomorrow. I may just be able to wrap up this piece with just one more day...

Bio of a Wood-burning:" Portland Waterfront, 1901," Day 2

What is often a daunting element for a pyrographer, when working on such a large piece, is that after several hours have been invested, so little appears to have been accomplished. I frequently find myself stepping back at the end of a work session, shaking my head and wondering what I'd done to swallow those hours. Most often, it is the piece I'm working on playing its mind-game on me. After six of seven hours' work, we expect to see more palpable progress, great swaths of wood burned under, and often as not this won't be the case.

Pyrography can be slow in its application, and especially when we are executing a highly-detailed burning, such as Portland Waterfront, 1901, a great deal of time will be spent on a comparatively small surface space. This can often only be appreciated at the end of the project, when all those elements in which we've invested so much time suddenly seem to snap together. Those are the moments that can make this craft so addictive: that warm little high we feel at the conclusion of the matter, sitting back and feeling it was all worth it in the end.

I have always been very fond of this theme because of it being such a busy scene, with figures ranging in size from smaller than a pencil lead to stepping through the extreme foreground and out of frame, too large to depict in full and achieve the desired effect. Today I've opted to start with some of the intermediate figures along the left-hand side of the street.



Keeping the pencil lines to a minimum, I'll lay out the figures in their proper perspective, then get busy with the burner. I'll cut the pencil lines first, then begin to draw the subjects in.



I take an important cue from the impressionist painters, in that when depicting figures, especially those at some distance, our eyes no longer pick up the finer details but rather how light, shadow, and color interact. The details become more general. While we may not fret too much about a color spectrum, dealing as we are in a monochromatic medium, that medium itself poses a distinct challenge to the pyrographic artist: with so much going on in a burn like this, and only a fairly narrow palette of shades to pull them off, keeping the figures from getting swallowed into their surroundings will require constant vigilance as this burn progresses.


Excepting any touch-ups that will announce themselves later, we've now established these figures by simply building shades up from bare-bones lines.

At the end of the evening's work-session, I've laid in the fascade of the left-hand buildings and spent a good deal of time shading it. I've established the first of a series of "events" (in this case, the pedestrians on that length of sidewalk and the horse-drawn carriage as it passes.) I have also begun cutting in the buildings and merchant ships on the right-hand side of the street. While I am very aware that much got accomplished tonight, it's proving to be one of those occasions when it just doesn't look it.


And the craziness hasn't even started...

Bio of a Wood-burning: Portland Waterfront, 1901, Day 1

I am dedicating this series of posts to my Mom.

A few years back, when I relocated back to this area, I stayed with my folks for the first several months. I worked second shift at a top-flight wood-working operation, the Duratherm Window Corp. in North Vassalboro. Through the work-weeks especially, they'd be gone by the time I got up, not getting home until after I'd left for work. Entire weeks went by and we'd not see each other, living under the same roof.

I had established a work-corner in my mom's garage and one of my projects that first summer was a version of "Portland Waterfront, 1901". My mother commented to me back then that the only way she was keeping track of me was by checking the progress of that burn when she got home from work. In such a way, the wood-burning seemed to form incrementally each day...rather like these "Bio of a Wood-Burning" posts, which I began with Marilyn a few weeks ago. The experience that summer is precisely what inspired me to do the Bio of a Wood-burning series. It seemed a fun experiment as well as offering a wonderful platform from which to share how to do these burns (the question most frequently asked of me). I'm geneally just flattered that they're interested.

So, yeah, I just have to dedicate this next series of posts to my mother, Simone.



One of the good things about being home as much as I have been of late, is that I occasionally "vacation" from my workspace downstairs to the much-cushier surroundings in our apartment. This piece, you'll notice, is quite large, 25" x 38". It will also prove to be an exercise in intense detail.

Portland Waterfront, 1901 is a theme I've returned to repeatedly for more than a decade. I love the image of a very real place (Commercial Street, Portland, ME) in an era when change was very much in the air, much like the wooden ships whose bowsprits would cross over the street when they were docked, coming only within a few feet of power-lines that had only so recently been strung. It is the very image of a busy Yankee seaport at the dawn of a new era.

In seeming contrast to my oft-stated preference for keeping my pre-sketching to a minimum and composing with the hot tool, this burning requires a lot of pencil work and prep. It is a very busy scene with much happening in every corner and contains so many complex angles and minutiae that it needs to be right on the first pass or the effect of the whole bloody burning can be ruined.


In actuality, I have kept my pencil-work to a minimum--but with so much going on, it just doesn't appear so. Most of the first day's session has been spent in lay-out. Over the next few days, these pencil lines will become a street scene representing more than two city blocks...circa 1901. In the three-ish hours I've already invested with my pencil and steel ruler, I have left most of the finer details and all of the closer ones out. As I work closer to an area, I'll compose as I go. I have found this to be invaluable as it leaves me plenty of time to get creative as I go. Sometimes the best ideas hit you only seconds before the burner hits the wood.


For some unknown reason, I pretty much always start this burn with the left-hand wall. It seems as good a place as any, I expect. I generally cut the bricks with the burner-tip, leaving a decent, but still fairly shallow burnline. In doing bricks, I've usually kept to a 4-step process. First, burn the outline; second, shade each brick to "desired texture." I then lightly shade the whole fascade, which knocks back the as-yet-burned "mortar" between the bricks and establishes the main shadows. The last step I save for later, one of the final stages of the burn itself, which is to tighten everything up once the burn is all but completed (and we have a clearer perspective of what we've actually accomplished.


At the end of this first day's work, better than 7 hours, I'm satisfied that we're off to a good start. The work is sketched out and the burn begun in earnest.

But we've still got a long ways to go...

My Two Loves

"My Two Loves"

Scott Antworth, 2009

16" x 24"

"My Two Loves" (Details)

This time around I've opted to attempt something a bit closer to home...










(Note the scale)

The Toe Dancers

"The Toe Dancers"

Scott Antworth, 2009

24" x 24"

The Classic Wood-burned Blanket Chest (front)

This panel, like the hundreds that preceded it, fits like a favorite pair of jeans for me. Measuring 18" x 36", it and a handful of its sister pieces will become the front panels of blanket chests within the coming weeks. I will revisit these chests and post their pictures once they are completed. I have been involved in building these chests, almost consistently, since April of 1990. Nowadays my buddy, Farmer Dave, is building my old chests, leaving me to focus on the pyrography. It is a convenient relationship. That Dave builds these chests better than I used to would be a matter of some chagrin were it not for the fact that he's such a talented craftsman that it would be siliness for me to feel anything but immensely pleased.

I've decided to share this panel while "in the raw" as I feel it well illustrates a point I've touched on in my last couple posts, that of woodgrains and wood-burning. As with the Sleeping Fawn, you'll notice that the grain announces itself rather prominently through the finished burn. This panel is made of a fairly densely-grained pine. While pine generally burns very well, often the grain likes to act fussy. This is especially evident in the background trees and foliage and how they have a rather striped aspect. In the end result, I feel this is of little consequence.

We are working with wood. Rather than canvas or paper, our images rarely obliterate the surface beneath. The wood always manages to assert itself. With this in mind, a pyrographer always recognizes that his vision must coexist and balance with its underlying surface.

We are always looking for that harmonious relationship. Seeking and achieving it is often what helps fuel our love for the craft.