Irish Lora S. - Pyrography Style Handbook

I wish to extend my deepest thanks to Tiffany Hill, Colleen Dorsey, and Chris Morrison for their excellent work in the creation, development, and refinement of this manuscript. As an author, it is a wonderful experience to be working with such a well-skilled team.

2020 by Lora S. Irish and Fox Chapel Publishing Company, Inc., 903 Square Street, Mount Joy, PA 17552.

Pyrography Style Handbook is an original work, first published in 2020 by Fox Chapel Publishing Company, Inc. The patterns contained herein are copyrighted by the author. Readers may make copies of these patterns for personal use. The patterns themselves, however, are not to be duplicated for resale or distribution under any circumstances. Any such copying is a violation of copyright law.

For a printable PDF of the patterns used in this book, please contact Fox Chapel Publishing at , quoting the ISBN and title of this book, as well as the pattern or patterns required.

Print ISBN 978-1-4971-0013-8
eISBN 978-1-6076-5735-4

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Leather hides image courtesy Michele Y. Parsons.

T o my total surprise in 2005, my husband, Michael, had a present waiting under our Christmas tree for me that would be life-changing for me as an artist. It was a dual-pen Razertip SS-D10 pyrography unit with a small variety of pen tips. To complement his wonderful gift was a stack of fifty birch plywood boards.

I was not new to pyrography as a crafter, having used a one-temperature Walnut Hollow tool for nearly twenty years. But recently I had picked up a new Walnut Hollow tool at my local craft store. It wasnt because there was anything wrong with my older tool, but because there were too many times where I wanted to quickly change pen tips during a work session. By running two units at the same time, I could switch from one tip to another easily.

With my husbands gift, I now had a brand new, variable-temperature burning unit, enough tips to do just about anything, and fifty blank canvases waiting to be filled with new designs, patterns, and artistic ideas. Michael had decided that it was time for me to step up to a temperature-regulated unit. That was at the end of December 2005, and by the end of January 2006, I had more than thirty of those plywood canvases finished with landscapes, animal portraits, moon face designs, and even a dragon-accented chess board; all in all, I had completed the projects for my first pyrography book with Fox Chapel Publishing, Great Book of Woodburning.

Why the flurry of artist action? Why did this change my life? I suddenly had a drawing pen for wood, leather, paper-mache, and even watercolor paper that could translate my fine art training into wonderfully detailed tonal value images. My thinking as a pyrographer broke out of the black outlines and silhouette work of a one-temperature tool into the territory of unlimited shades and three-dimensional, realistic burnings.

Today I still have and use my two Walnut Hollow units. To these and Mikes gift of the Razertip I have added the Walnut Hallow variable-temperature Versa-Tool, the Walnut Hollow Creative Woodburner variable-temperature unit, the Colwood Detailer with a variety of permanent pens, and the Optima 1 Dual unit with the heavy-gauge cords and a variety of pens. Each tool gets used regularly as each has its own special features (which you can learn more about ).

In my passion for pyrography and with the support of Fox Chapel Publishing, this book, Pyrography Style Handbook, joins my six other publications all about woodburning: Great Book of Woodburning; The Art & Craft of Pyrography; Little Book of Pyrography; Pyrography Basics; The Art of Leather Burning; and Landscape Pyrography Techniques & Projects.

So what makes this book different from the previous books?

Pyrography has changed, matured, and exploded from accent line work into fine, detailed artwork in the last twenty years since I moved from a one-temperature tool to a variable-temperature unit. The number of pyrography units available to the fine artist has dramatically increased while the prices have dropped into a crafters budget range. Plus, there is a huge pen tip profile selection that gives artists total control over their images. So, for me, its time to step up once again and bring to you many of the fine art styles and techniques that you can use in your burning.

Over the years and through my previous six books, we have talked about and learned how to choose your patterns; how to prepare your wood or leather; and how to execute a design through texture, tonal values, and shading. Now let us take an in-depth look at the different artistic styles of rendering a design we can use in our burnings: silhouette, engraving, crosshatching, pointillism, shaded drawing, texture painting, and realism.

In the pages of this book and the projects presented, I hope to be able to teach you how many wonderful art styles there are and how you can use them to create your own unique art.

H eres a preview of the projects youll be able to tackle in this book. Come back to these pages for detailed, large images to refer to as you work.

This green man design represents rebirth, the cycle of growth, and the return of spring by combining branches, vines, and other botanical elements into the facial features of a human. Like zoomorphism, which applies animal attributes to non-animal objects, the green man blends our humanity with the flora of our environment.

Solid shapes, black and white tonal values only, crisp edges, and unburned pattern lines create the silhouette technique. Our eye is used to seeing art created using solid-fill black line work. But with silhouette work, the tonal value emphasis is reversed so that the details and outlines are left in the pure color of the mediawhitewhile the solid areas of the work are black. This green mans mustache is visually dominant not because it was burned, but because it was left unburned in the natural tonal value of the wood.