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.

Woodland Morn, Sleeping Fawn

"Woodland Morn, Sleeping Fawn"

Scott Antworth, 2009

18" x 18"

Wood-burning 101: Pyrography and the Sleeping Fawn

After spending some time with this panel and reviewing its rather pronounced defects, I thought it would prove ideal as a companion piece for my Woodland Morn, #1. Their dimensions (18" x 18" in the end) ) were close enough where they seemed made for each other. These defects provided a unique challenge, as they always do. They helped guide my decisions on what could happen here. What I came up with was something that I feel is straight-forward enough where the weekend hobbyist might have some fun with as well.

I decided that the most dramatic of this panel's surface defects, a dark stripe of heartwood, would incorporate itself nicely into the bark of a fallen tree. With this thought in mind, building this scene around a sleeping fawn seemed a natural progression.

I begin by making a very general sketch in pencil. This is usually as detailed as I tend to go before plugging the burner in. At this stage, I'm mostly focused on getting the more important compositional lines down. Everything else will be sketched and composed with a hot burner.


In composition, pyrography differs from painting in that, generally speaking, a painter will start with the background of a canvas and work forward. He does this to keep the background from "interfering" with what would otherwise be an established foreground. In pyrography it is generally a good idea to begin with the foreground, or at least its most essential points. In this way, we reduce the possibility that we will have burned a solid line straight through where it didn't need to be. It is clear from the opening strokes of this burn that the grain will be a major player in it. Some species assert their grains through a woodburning more noticeably than others. This is a fairly densely-grained pine panel and you'll notice how the burner wants to burn unevenly as it slides over the surface. It will take some control to keep these lines as clean as you'd like.

As mentioned, most of the active "sketching" for this piece will be done with the burner itself. I treat my pencil lines as a frame upon which to "drape" the burn. By this I mean that it is very important that we keep mindful of this direction in which we lay the fur. Fur on an animal follows the underlying musculature and becomes a helpful ally in creating the appearance of this animal's shape. I almost always begin by establishing the most important lines. With the fawn, I try to keep the outside edges as "soft" as possible. I have also very lightly burnt the outlines of the fawn's spots. This can be a little tricky in that it is important that these lines be lighter than the ones that will replace them, lest you be left with dark circles where you'd rather have gentle progression. I find that laying in these spots proves helpful in sketching this fawn. Spots on a fawn generally form on its sides, running from front-to-back, leaving a "spot-free stripe"down the very middle of this youngster's back. With this in mind, these spots provide the artist with wonderful marker points with which to determine your fawn's shape--and the directions its fur will take. At this point, we simply continue working these areas, laying on the fur over what is becoming a more detailed template.

Once I've finished what amounts to a "base coat" for the fur, I switch tips for my shader. Until this point, I've been using a fairly fresh "standard tip." At even a cursory glance, we see that my shading tip is, in fact, a very well-worn standard tip from a burner that died years ago. Its worn surface delivers a "softer" line and doesn't cut in quite as easily. I use the shader on the fur that I've already established, softening and defining the contours of the fawn.





In this pic, I have shaded the lower ends of the fawn and its hip. You can see how the shading helps define the fawn and gives it a more lifelike surface to the eye.













As I mentioned earlier, the grain of this particular panel is fairly aggressive. My philosophy has always been that the idea of working with wood means that we effect a relationship between its surface and the image we are hoping to create. They will always coexist. Sometimes, however, it becomes necessary to help nature along. Here the hard stripes of the grain are quite dense and burn much more slowly than their surrounding material. In laying in this area beneath the fawn's ear, I have found that its "striping" is a bit too aggressive and isn't allowing me to round this area of the fawn's head. "Helping nature" here means to gently and slowly stroke the lighter, denser grain, careful not to darken its surrounding wood, thus easing the contrast and easing the effect.






















In laying in the facial details, such as the eye and nose, I find it helpful to remember that very dark surfaces are rarely uniformly dark. Noses, especially moist ones, like to reflect light, as do the eyes. While this sleeping fawn's eye is largely obscured in this perspective, we achieve a more lifelike appearance by layering its effect and allowling at least some play of light on its surface.









And in such ways, slowly building up the shades and textures, we begin to achieve the image we had hoped to conjure here...

From the Workbench: Woodspeak

From the Workbench...


I will always maintain that if you wait long enough, the wood will tell you what it wants to be. This strikes most as pure gibberish; but you know what they say: "If ya gotta ask, you just wouldn't understand..."

Every piece of wood, no matter how similar, is as unique as a fingerprint. Woodgrain is never repeated in nature, not once. For even the novice woodworker, we discover early on that there is an inherent beauty to each piece, be it the caramel striping one often finds in pine or how the grain achieves an effect, and often the very illusion, of running water.

For burning purposes, I've used a wide variety of species over the years and I do have my favorites. For the fairly high-detailed burns such as Marilyn and The Smith, I've come to favor a 1/4-inch birch laminate plywood. As you can see from especially the earlier pics, these provide a very clean surface, reducing almost any need to have to plan and work around surface defects. The birch also takes a burner nicely. It is also inexpensive, which I also find a bonus. Basswood, which I actually do prefer owing to its softer qualities, will run you quite a bit more. I've also found polar to be a very cooperative wood as well.

Hands down, most of my burnings have ended up on pine. Comparatively speaking, it's fairly inexpensive and can be found virtually anywhere. It tools very well with a burner, though (being pine) it frequently serves you up some challenges when it comes to layout and "letting the wood tell you" what will happen here.

These two pieces of stock are waiting in the work queue. The bottom piece measures 48" long and is roughly 22" wide. From a woodburner's perspective, it's ugly, like "he's so ugly it's like his face caught fire and they beat it out with a shovel." That kinda ugly. The big knots you see are one of 3 bands of those big bad boys that stripe this panel side-to-side. Further, it's rife with patches of pitch and a bluish mold I've heard referred to a "pasture pine." Personally, I've found "pasture pine" to be quite striking, but when it comes to burning it, it's helpful to remember that it burns darker (and more quickly) than the wood around it. In short, you're still likely to see it through the finished burn.

Were it not for the larger panel's edges, I'd be less pleased with the prospect of working it. As it is, I'm looking forward to it. It is, in fact, not a "panel" at all, but a single board with "live edge" sides, meaning the wood on both sides of this board had been on the outside of the tree. These boards can make stunning furniture, which is where this one is destined. Farmer Dave has plans to turn this one and its sister board into tables. Knowing full well just how talented a woodworker Dave is, and how mint this table will be when he's done with it, I have to come up with something that won't detract.

The smaller of the two boards pictured is a panel and presents some challenges of its own. The dark, heavy stripe comes from the heartwood of the tree and you will see it when whatever you burn over it is done. As it is too large to be ignored, it really has to be incorporated into the burning itself, along with that fairly pronounced knot next to it.

When I look at a panel with, especially a variety of knots and defects, I pretty much already know it's going to end up as a forest scene. As themes go, such scenes are as perfect as it gets to incorporate what nature won't let you escape. In this vertical orientation (my original thought), I was thinking a whitetail deer buck. The heartwood stripe could then be easily swallowed into the bark of a tree next to/slightly behind the deer. I have opted against this, since the rack of the buck's antlers would have to pass over the terminus of the heartwood and still have enough space to be represented beneath the top edge. Further, whether this piece ends up framed or incorporated into a table, I must keep mindful that it will lose app. 3/4 of an inch, where it fits beneath the frame. I'd rather not lose the tips of the antlers that way, and to make the deer smaller would be at the cost of the scale I wished to achieve.

So we look at it this way, in the horizontal orientation. The vertical dark pencil line is actually the future edge of this panel as it has been conceived as a companion piece for "Woodland Morn, #1," one of the "gallery" images riding the right margin. This also explains why I'm most interested in continuing the deer theme onto this piece. As this panel is slightly larger than its sister, I'll cut it to size just before its framed.

In the horizontal, that annoying heartwood is begging to become part of the bark contours for a fallen tree. The crescent pencil lines and arrows indicate a limb on this deadfall, with the crotch of where it joins the trunk at the topmost line. With the scene taking shape in this manner, I gotta say that the notch of this deadfall is just aching for a sleeping fawn.

In such ways, the wood whispers to us all...

Marilyn

"Marilyn"

Scott Antworth, 2009

(based on Ballerina, Milton H. Greene, 1954)

24" x 30" *


*These dimensions are not final as this piece remains to be framed. It will likely be framed in oak.

Bio of a Woodburning--Marilyn, Final Session

As I wrapped up Marilyn, dawn from my workspace window looked like this...and sounded like the Dead playing a '69 Dark Star. They followed a night-long parade of bluesfolk with names like Bessie Smith, Big Joe Williams, and Robert Nighthawk, straight through my wee hours. For a hopeless musichound like myself, having a stack of discs on hand is essential. If I'm working, music's playing, and that's just the way it is.

I have found, when attempting portraiture, when staring at that big blank nothing, it's best to take a breath, bite your lip, and dive in. And pray.

I often start with a subject's hair. While I will leave the finer points (errant strands falling on a cheek, for example) for later, I find this helps frame and define the work area of the face itself. When doing hair, it's helpful to remember that portraying hair is never done with solid, repetitive strands. When looking at how hair is lies on a model's head, we can see distinct "quadrants." These are how we segment, then construct the illusion of human hair.

As with the skirt a couple days ago, the pencil lines here will be erased as work progresses toward them. Were Marilyn a brunette, I'd had no worries as I'd simply burn the lines under. Since Marilyn's hair is so light, these lines would show unacceptably through. We've come too far to allow that to happen.

You will also notice, riding close to one of the marked boundaries a dark spot. this is actually a blemish in the wood surface. Another mark appears striping the upper left arm. With the former, I was able to "vanish" this mark into Marilyn's hairdo. The stripe on her arm, however, must be allowed to remain. Sometimes you eat the bear, sometimes the bear eats you.

As I lay in the hair and frame Marilyn's face, I find it necessary to work this area upside down. This is a fairly large piece, with a total surface space of 5 square feet. In order to get and maintain my hand and wrist in the necessary position, I am forever moving the piece around to suit the purpose.












I found there was no hiding after the hair was laid in. Time to tackle the fleshtones of the face...

And there comes a moment after long, often tedious hours have been invested, that it occurs to you that you've finished your piece. Your eye keeps searching the surface for that one last detail you've left undone.











You step back. You breathe.

Bio of a Woodburning--Marilyn, Day 6

Okay, despite what some of y'all's wives have been telling you, this is The Sweet Spot...


It took me a while to find it. (Yeah, I know, just like every other man...) Fleshtones have always been a challenge for me when working with a hot tool. The dynamics of how wood heats and how a hot tool works both conspire against effecting the illusion of flesh. Look at it this way: we're using a tool designed to make distinct marks in the surface of the wood and hoping to achieve an effect that essentially has no such lines, but is represented by smooth, unmarked variations in tone and shade. I have tried and used a variety of techniques over the years, including open flame, to achieve these tones, more often than not with painful results. While I am constantly exploring how to achieve these desired effects without leaving burn marks in my wake, I largely use one very basic technique.

The pencil tip in the sweet spot picture indicates a point along the flat edge of a standard tip. A standard tip is configured like a shallow wedge, with a sharp front edge and point. The area I'm indicating is just inside that sharp front edge and slightly below the point. As I'm right-handed, I work to the right of the front edge. When working the fleshtones, it is generally the only part of that tip I try to let contact the wood surface. In life, this "sweet spot" is smaller than a grain of rice.

Here's the kicker: if the front edge makes contact with the wood, you will have a sharp, dark line (usually a great many of them) precisely where they should never be. If the point hits, you get a dark pinpoint that is every bit as annoying. If I use more than that small area of the flat, I find too much gets burned too quickly and creates a "dark streak" effect.

Even when using a technique that I'm comfortable with, the dynamics of burn tip contacting wood adds one more just for giggles. A tip will cool just perceptively when it hits the wood. Consequently, when "brushing" the shades in, the micro-second when the tip touches wood is often forever preserved as a slightly darker "dot" at either ends of the stroke. To combat this, I try to gently "brush" the stroke, moving quickly and softly at the front end of the stroke (with the idea that the work surface of the tip is moving so quickly, it doesn't have a chance to leave unwanted scoring behind.)

All these unwanted "phantom marks" are precisely why I've always found fleshtones a challenge in a pyrographic medium. That constant challenge is doubtlessly why I keep returning to the attempts.

In effecting fleshtones, it really is a matter of just training your eye to see what it's really seeing; then it's your eye pleading with your hand to translate that. For example, when considering Greene's original image, our eyes want to see the whites of Marilyn's costume. There is, in fact, very little white there. Even at the barest contour of fabric, this is entirely grey-scale.

Further, we know that the mesh of her tutu is composed of white threads. Because of its transparency (& how that transparency is manipulated by the amount of material folded under, e.g. left of her right elbow) what's beneath and behind it translate very well through the fabric. Notice, for example, how the darkness of the tapestry and the thinness of the skirt material make the section around Marilyn's legs appear darker than the sides of the skirt. This actually helped in achieving the desired effect as it gave me a section of greater contrast in which to pull it off.

With these fleshtones, and how they worked with this skirt, most of the problem solved itself, so long as I was able to keep in mind that this is a monochromic image. Grey scale...or in this case, "brown-scale." Flesh is darker than white fabric. Flesh beneath a layer of thin white mesh in lighter than it is just below the hemline. You get the idea.

In reaching this point, it became decision-making time. In the room, Marilyn's chest and left arm at this moment actually appear very lifelike. Her right arm appears a bit dark and "choppy." The fleshtones of that arm, most specifically its areas of heavier shadow, will be softened a bit later. As for left arm and chest, I must stay mindful that the finish I will be using on the finished piece will lighten the surface by as much as a single shade. Further, I've not yet achieved the desired contrast between her flesh and the fabric of her costume. These surfaces will need to be darkened by at least a single shade.

When I began this burn, I'd not intended to save Marilyn's head for last. It just worked out that way. Generally, I prefer to begin with the main event and work my way out from there. But when it comes down to it, it's always good to work the area where you feel led. The closer one gets to the conclusion of the matter, the more narrow those choices get.

I had hoped to lay in all the fleshtones (which would include Marilyn's face) in last night's session. I've always preferred to work fleshtones in one pass. As it happened, what did get accomplished took 7 hours in the getting there...

Bio of a Woodburning--Marilyn, Days 4 & 5

After a shorter session last night and a longer one this past evening, I don't quite know what to make of how progress seems to be going. As with most large-scale burnings, I find myself growing impatient over how long a piece seems to be taking. All things considered, work on this piece seems to be progressing decently enough. Another session, two at the most, and Marilyn will be ready for framing.

Provided I don't completely muck this up.

Last night I opted to lay in the carpet, essentially cutting Marilyn's figure completely from the background. I have found when depicting large "fields" like this carpet, the human eye will invariably pick up on patterns that we often make when covering an area with very repetitive strokes. I feel they tend to make an image look more artificial. To combat this problem, when laying in a textured surface like this carpet, I tend to move the burner fairly rapidly and in very random orbits. As with most actions with a burner, this is also a very repetitive motion. Once burned, it simply refuses to appear so. Further, especially when working a larger area, I like to work multiple points and slowly "blossom" these points until they converge. In this manner, I avoid making the piece look more mechanical than it already is.

At this stage of things, the end of the fourth night I've spent with this piece, Marilyn has been cut from her background and I have burned what amounts to a "base coat" for the carpet After the portraiture itself is done, I'll return to the carpet for extra shading, final touch-ups and laying in these refreshingly straight-forward shadows.

At this point, most of all that's left holds no margin for error.

I have felt compelled to attempt this piece for awhile, owing mostly to two distinct challenges it presents. First is the portraiture itself. Fleshtones are particularly tricky with a woodburner and when one is dealing with an image as well-recognized as Miss Monroe, the portrait has to be spot-on. Since we're dealing with a medium that can't realistically be erased or painted under, you only get one chance to get it right.

The second of these "challenges" has long struck me as being the trickier of the two: Marilyn's skirt. The tutu is multiple layers of translucent fabric. In addition to its own layering, Marilyn's legs and portions of her wicker chair transfer through the fabric. How one does that without making the skirt appear too solid (and ruining its effect) is a bit of a mystery. I've never actually done it before.

A good deal of the fifth night was spent with the burner unplugged and me brainstorming how to pull this off. What I came up with was to mark some of the general (and multiple) lines of the skirt very lightly with pencil. Unlike the lines I make when I'm pre-sketching the highlights, I've no intention of actually burning these pencil lines. Their only existence is to help me keep track of the direction in which I'm working.

Working the surface with this "plan," it's essential to erase the lines as you go. The burn in this area is so lightly shaded that the lines will show, unless they're eliminated before the burner tip reaches them. Once a pencil-line had been hit with a burner, it's nigh-on impossible to erase. You'll notice in the upper left of the frame below, part of a terrycloth rag. It is essential that you wipe the surface clean of any particles, such as even the tiniest eraser crumbs. When a burner hits an eraser crumb (or any other small particle), it will scorch it into the surface and mar your burning.

Once plugged in, the skirt ended up going fairly smoothly. I found using quick, smooth, and very light strokes worked best. At the end of this fifth night, I've opted to revisit the skirt (where it crosses over Marilyn's legs) until I lay in the fleshtones. There is only a narrow contrast between the shades of this skirt and the shades of Marilyn's flesh. In order to effect that balance, I'd as soon do them at the same time.

...which I suppose would be tonight...

Bio of a Woodburning--Marilyn, Days 2& 3

Unfortunately, I've not been able to keep my butt in the chair as much as I'd like these last couple days, between ringing telephones, a spouse who insists on speaking, and the usual annoying host of responsibilities.

I have only just recently begun employing a 25 watt burner for areas that I will be scorching heavily. I've got to admit, I'm impressed--and somewhat chagrined that I'd not done so before. The 25-watt hot tool has a much stouter shaft and can hold up to more abuse than my preferred weapon of choice: the humble 20-watt, WB-1 Burning Pen. With this Marilyn burn, I've found the heavier hot tool did marvelously in laying down the background tapestry. To have achieved equal results with my WB-1 would have literally taken twice as long.

In my last post I mentioned having cut Marilyn's shoulder & forearm with a light burn line. In the last pic of this post, you'll note that the only place where I've burnt the background tapestry all the way to Marilyn is at that same shoulder. When burning subjects such as the human form, I always lightly cut the line as mentioned. This line actually does cut a very shallow groove in the wood...

The line of the shoulder (as with pretty much anything else you'd care to name from a skyscraper to a salt shaker) is defined by what's behind that line. In this case, a very large tapestry. When burning this background to the line of the shoulder, you will feel the tip of the burner hit that "dividing line," which is your cue to break contact with the wood surface. As shown, the original outline vanishes, leaving a cleanly-lined form.

After 3 days of living with that tapestry, I'm well-past anxious to get to the next phase of things.

I've just not decided what that will be...