Wood is an extremely grateful material. Tough enough to be durable, hard enough to hold even very thin shapes, soft enough to allow processing with simple hand tools.
Therefore, there are many methods for decorating wooden products. For example, patterns and drawings on wood.
The concept of pyrography
Wood burning or pyrography is a fairly simple activity, but at the same time it provides a quick and beautiful effect. In terms of its technology, pyrography is easier to perform than, for example, carving, although, of course, here too much depends on the complexity of the pattern and execution technique.
Patterns for burning wood are made with a special device - a burner. It is a metal pen attached to a pen. The pen is made of nichrome wire of different thicknesses, which allows you to get lines and dots of different diameters. As a rule, burners are equipped with a whole set of attachments used for pyrography.
There are devices with hard and wire feathers. The former have a constant heating temperature and are more often used for background cauterization. In burners with wire pens, the heating temperature can be adjusted, which allows you to obtain lines of different intensities.
When the device is turned on, the pen heats up to a fairly high temperature and burns through it when it comes into contact with wood. When working, you must follow safety rules, since it is very easy to get burned on the wire.
Relatively soft wood is used as a material for crafts: birch, chestnut, poplar, alder. Very good results when creating a pattern are obtained on plywood, especially birch. A prerequisite: the wood or the same plywood must be very well dried.
In addition, to obtain a high-quality ornament or design, you must first sand the material. The surface of the craft should be completely smooth.
Pyrography technique
There are several different techniques that allow you to obtain a drawing or ornament from a sketch.
It is better for a beginner to start with the simplest and most standard ones.
- The standard technique involves transferring a sketch of a pattern onto a tree and burning it along the contour. In this case, various methods are acceptable: applying strokes, obtaining a dot image, and so on. The photo shows an image of a bird.
- The negative method requires more subtle and lengthy work. In this case, the design is created with the light color of untouched wood, and the background is burned out. Most often, photographs or complex pictures are burned in this way. For patterns, standard techniques are usually sufficient.
In this case, 2 methods are used. The first involves direct burning of the background around the applied sketch. The second combines carving and background: first, the entire background is burned out, and then the artist cuts out an image on it.
The relief pattern is another example of a combination of carving and pyrography. To do this, a sketch is transferred to the tree, cut out to give volume - not with a jigsaw, but with a milling cutter, and then burned out in certain areas. The photo shows a relief image.
Drawings and patterns for wood burning can be downloaded from any relevant website. You can even use your own photo if you can download the right conversion program.
Work technology
The work itself is quite simple, although it requires accuracy and perseverance. As a rule, it cannot be completed in one go.
- Use a jigsaw to cut out a part of the appropriate size, and carefully clean the surface and cuts with sandpaper.
- Patterns for wood carving are redrawn onto a sheet of paper by hand or through carbon paper.
- A pen of the required type - writing or oblique - is installed on the device, and the contours of the image are burned out.
- They begin to retouch the background - to do this, attach a retouching pen to the device. Other attachments can also be used. The photo shows the processing of the background under the pattern.
- After the material has cooled, the surface is cleaned of dust and soot and wiped with an eraser.
- To make the product more durable, the craft is coated with transparent varnish.
In the proposed video lesson, burning a pattern on a wooden sheet is discussed in more detail.
The technique of wood burning or pyrography is a simple and exciting activity that is closely related to the traditions of Russian folk art. Since ancient times, handicraft has been valuable in Rus'. Men forged iron, burned and carved various objects from wood. Especially often these were various icons, crosses, iconostases, as well as cutting boards, kitchen utensils, combs, and so on. It was not difficult to understand wood burning; sketches were then found in the surrounding world: these were images of saints, natural patterns and motifs, flowers, animals.
Now all kinds of templates and stencils can be easily found on the Internet, in specialized literature, and you can also buy a ready-made set that includes a board, an electric burner, and even a sketch with subjects for burning.
Material and burning rules
For beginners, light and soft woods are best; they can easily be painted with a pyrograph (electric burner).
You can use materials from linden, poplar, chestnut, the main thing is to choose a flat wooden surface so that there are no knots on it.
Before starting burning, it is necessary to prepare the board, namely, clean the surface of the board with sandpaper, then cover it with furniture varnish and sand it again. This will remove all lint and unnecessary “burrs” from your board.
Also make sure that the surface is completely dry before you can start working. To avoid contamination of the working surface of your board, you can apply the design not to the board itself, but to transparent paper. This will remove the paper as the image burns out. Be sure to rest the hand holding the pyrograph on a table or other work surface to avoid accidental movements that could damage the design. Remember that the tip of the burner is hot, so be careful when working with a dangerous tool.
As soon as the drawing is burned out, you need to let the work cool slightly for 3-5 minutes, then carefully walk with fine sandpaper over the entire surface of the board. This must be done carefully so as not to damage the lines and strokes made by the pyrograph.
Let's start decorating
Finished drawings can be painted. Watercolor or acrylic are suitable, and you can also use oil if you know how to work with it. Color will add elegance and brightness to your work. You can also use a wax finish to add shine to your painting and preserve colors.
Pyrography will be especially interesting for children, because so many beautiful and interesting paintings can be created using this wonderful technique! Boys can burn out animals, favorite superheroes, car or motorcycle models. Girls will prefer to burn princesses, horses or unicorns, cute kittens or flowers. How great it will be to come up with your own stories for burning! There is room for your imagination to run wild. Here are some photos to inspire kids:
And a few more complex options:
“Write with fire” - this is how the word “pyrography” is literally translated, denoting one of the areas of decorative and applied art. Sketches for burning are applied not with a pencil or a brush, but with a special soldering device with nozzles of different diameters. Such a network-powered device is called a pyrograph. In order for the desired image to appear on the title, in addition to sketch drawings, stencils and templates are used.
Methods of burning drawings
Sketches are preliminary drawings with clear contour lines, along which master burners apply the image to the base. They reflect the main idea and concept of work:
- color and light planning;
- composition;
- proportionality of forms;
- plot component.
Stencils are also used, the main function of which is to apply complex compositions to a wooden surface. The more carefully the sketch or template is worked out, the better and more professional the result will be.
Unfortunately, not all pyrographers are high-class artists - mostly they are lovers of creating something with their own hands, people who gravitate toward beauty and grace, but are far from perfect in using a pencil.
Beginners just starting to dive into this fascinating field of study can be advised to use the following methods:
- search the Internet for the image you are interested in and print it on a printer;
- visit a large market that sells goods for handicrafts and creativity, and choose from a wide range of products any burning set you like, with ready-made templates, stencils and sketches;
- Alternatively, you can find a similar product in a highly specialized online store and place an order.
The last two options require some financial costs, but the first one is quite economical and affordable. Needlewomen and craftsmen often resort to it in a variety of handmade areas. Even without the necessary equipment - a printer, it will not be difficult to implement your idea by using photocopying services in any photo printing salon or office supply store.
The variety of topics and wide range of applications in various household areas place pyrography on a par with the most popular types of crafts.
If we look back at the times of the Soviet past, we can remember that burning was one of the popular activities for schoolchildren. Club activities in pioneer homes and labor lessons in schools were often devoted to this applied type of creativity. Boys and girls enjoyed burning out a variety of pictures for their mothers, fathers, and friends.
Now this direction, gaining strength, is being born anew, adapting to modern realities. New interesting topics are appearing, tools and imaging technologies have been modernized. With their help, professionals create masterpieces of wood art.
Popular stories
Perhaps the most acceptable place where the pyrography technique fits harmoniously into the interior was, is and remains the sauna. This is facilitated by the excellent combination and uniformity of the material - wood, which, by the way, is often left over after the construction of a steam room and can be successfully used as a raw material for wood burning. There are many sketches for a bath, as well as original ideas for decorating bath accessories and accessories. These include story panels, shelves, hangers, and signs with inscriptions. After all, there is nothing better for a bathhouse than a comfortable environment that sets visitors up for rest and relaxation.
For example, signs with slogans of invitation and wishes for light steam would be good to hang on the doors. Decorate the walls with funny plot paintings that correspond to the spirit of the steam room and, of course, place a panel depicting the owner of the establishment himself - Bannik. The transformed steam room will delight its regulars and attract new steam lovers to visit.
Bath furniture is also decorated with burning, using for these purposes cliches of plant ornaments, depicting mainly oak and birch leaves, as elements of the main attributes of the steam room’s health-improving procedures.
Beautiful openwork frames - frames - are also made with ornamental patterns. You can find a wide variety of wood burning designs.
Drawings of patterns for frames
Ornaments contain the following elements:
- vegetable;
- combined - flora and fauna;
- religious, ethnic, protective symbols;
- geometric.
The component that unites them is the rhythm of the pattern.
Any framed images always have a complete, laconic appearance. Elegantly decorated, they are used to frame mirrors, photographs, portraits, panels, congratulatory texts, and kitchen cutting boards.
It is important to know that the art of pyrography is a very painstaking task. Applying such complex, ornate, repeating patterns requires increased attention and effort. You can look at a small example of how you can burn out an ornamental frame yourself.
Tools and materials:
- Burnout soldering iron;
- wooden base;
- a frame sketch selected and printed on paper. (It is more convenient to use a stencil, as this will greatly simplify the work. You will not need to draw the pattern, just trace it with a pencil along the cut out outline);
- copy paper of any color;
- masking tape;
- simple pencil.
Step-by-step work:
Thus, by faithfully fulfilling all wishes, you can achieve great success and become a real master of wood burning.
Animal sketches
Which artist or child doesn’t like to draw animals and birds? These are unlikely to be found. Children, for the most part, when choosing a drawing on a free theme, prefer to depict animals, especially characters from their favorite cartoons.
There is a great artist in every child, which is why it is so easy to get children interested in drawing. Instilling a love for pyrography will also not be difficult - all you have to do is give a gift in the form of a pyrography kit for a birthday or New Year's holiday.
A child's first creation will be a wonderful decoration for a child's room. It could be some cute dog or kitten, a bird or a butterfly - it doesn’t matter. Another thing is valuable: the child chooses a living creature. He gives his love to his pet - he takes care of it, plays with it, and captures it in a graphic image. Boys especially love horses, dogs, and predators - lions, tigers, wolves, bears. From fantastic characters - dragons and dinosaurs. Girls, on the other hand, are characterized by more delicate creatures: foxes, hedgehogs, deer.
Animal patterns are varied both in appearance and in the style of execution - from primitive schematic and silhouette forms to three-dimensional, picturesque highly artistic figures.
Also, fairy-tale images are of interest to young people: the Gray Wolf, the Firebird and the Serpent-Gorynych, Kikimoras, Leshy and many others.
Our little brothers often have beautiful landscape views as their backdrop—their natural habitat. Therefore, burning out sketches of nature in paintings is not in last place. The presence of a landscape creates a special flavor and gives vitality to the work. This is especially evident when, having completed the main part of the work, they begin the most interesting part - applying color. After all, scorched paintings do not always remain in black and white; sometimes they are supplemented with color shades.
Nature theme
The beauty of nature can inspire any creative person, and pyrograph artists are no exception. Drawing their ideological ideas from the vast naturalistic ocean, they boldly embody them in decorating not only the walls of the room, but also furniture, dishes, and household items. Modern advanced tools allow us to talk about such a direction as miniature pyrography.
This kind of decoration will look great in a country house or in the interior of wooden houses. Adherents of a natural lifestyle and lovers of eco-style are sure to find many interesting and original crafts, both for themselves and for adding additional charm to their home.
With such a gift you can surprise the most demanding beauty connoisseur. In addition, a hobby can become a source of additional income if the hobby develops into a serious occupation.
On the vastness of the World Wide Web, you can create a mini-site offering your products or a page on the famous “Masters Fair”, posting new items there.
Everything will depend on desire, skill, and most importantly, patience in mastering the art of “drawing with fire.”
Image Transfer Methods
There are still disputes among woodburners about applying a design to a piece of wood. Most people lean towards the old, time-tested method - the copy method. It is more suitable for beginners and children. But professionals prefer an alternative method - shading on the wrong side. It has very weak, barely outlined contours, which subsequently merge with the scorched strokes and do not create a delineation that betrays the amateurism of the performer.
It's done this way:
- The drawing is outlined on paper. As a result, its outline is obtained on the reverse side;
- the image is turned face down and, going slightly beyond the boundaries of the lines, shading is made over the entire area with a stylus;
- The drawing is again turned over to the front side and applied to the base using shading. Secure with tape;
- the composition is outlined again, without effort, so as not to damage the paper;
- A sketch is burned out from the resulting slate imprint.
Another simple method is pressing along the contour:
- attach the sketch to a board or plywood;
- Using a pen without ink, with medium pressure, draw along all the lines;
- There will be an imprint on the wood, which can be easily traced with a soldering iron.
Craftsmen who master the skill of graphic representation prefer to make a sketch directly on the basis, without additional linear markings, being content with only weak outlines of the compositional arrangement.
Those who want to master the art of pyrography can try any technique. And even if it doesn’t turn out at all as expected, diligence and self-confidence will lead to decent results over time.
Attention, TODAY only!
Pyrography, also known as the art of wood burning, is gaining more and more popularity every day among people of all age groups and categories. One of the reasons for such an unexpected surge of interest in wood burning, we believe, is the emergence of new, simple and safe to use tools - pyrographs. Paintings created specifically for burning on any wood are an excellent gift for any celebration, made with love by your own hands. The person who gives you such a gift shows the full strength of his love and attention to you, because it will take him at least several hours to make one such work.
How to choose a tool and wood for making scorched paintings:- Wood burning is an art that does not require any expensive, hard-to-find tools and materials. As a burning tool for beginners A very ordinary soldering iron may be suitable, which has the shape of an ordinary writing pen, a little larger in size than what we are used to, which means you will simply trace the lines of a pattern previously applied to the base material. Some people use nails heated with a flame from a lighter or torch as a pyrograph, which are held with the heads of pliers. This method is not suitable for everyone. The ideal option would be a professional pyrograph or the most budget-friendly equivalent - a burner, which you can purchase at any specialized store.
- Images for such paintings do not need to be drawn by hand with a pencil, it is enough download a picture you liked on the Internet, print and transfer it to the tree. You can transfer a drawing to wood using black graphite paper; unlike regular carbon paper, it can be easily erased if necessary and retains the accuracy of the image lines when heated. Some people print the design on thin parchment paper, glue it to the wood and then burn it. The heat melts the paper, and the excess is then easily removed. At first, choose lungs patterns and ornaments that will help you improve your skills and hone your burning skills.
- It is better for young burners to take wooden blanks cut from soft, easily processed trees, with a uniform fiber structure. Wood from trees such as poplar, aspen, and linden is suitable for this. Small-sized blanks are an excellent start for beginning pyrographers. Do not forget to sand the surface of the board with fine-grained sandpaper immediately before work. Instead of wooden planks cut on your own, you can use inexpensive and commonly available plywood, because it does not have a pronounced structure and can be easily burned out.
We are exploring options for paintings for wood burning
It is better to take simple sketches for the first works, with a minimum number of lines and strokes. After you notice that such sketches are already quite easy for you, and their completion takes much less time than at first, it’s time to start burning more complex paintings, for example, depicting animals, nature, and sometimes people .
Famous pyrographers draw their inspiration from everything that surrounds them, but the most popular are the images using fire on a wooden base of animals, birds, nature, and less often people, some unusually complex ornaments consisting of many small details. You can see all this in the photos below.
Julia Bender's paintings are filled with small details and play of shadows. Small strokes with the metal tip of a pyrograph convey every, even the smallest hair of the animal. The feeling that you are looking at a photographic image will not leave you until the very last seconds. But no, all these beautiful animals are made using the technique of burning wood with a red-hot pyrograph.
Peter Walker burns his paintings onto surfboards. Its bright patterns are a mixture of animal and plant life, flavored with rich blue shades. In some of his paintings, traces of flames are intricately intertwined into colors on the skin of exotic animals.
Rick Merian has been doing woodburning relatively recently. The main themes of his images are movie characters from the most famous and popular films/series and tattoos that he saw on the bodies of those around him. I think you can easily recognize many of the faces in the scorched paintings.
Video on the topic of the article
In conclusion of the article, we would like to invite you to familiarize yourself with a small selection of video clips in which you will see how children and adults burn out simple and not so simple images using metal and flame.
During the Soviet Union Woodburning was in the nature of a mass hobby. Almost every family had a special device, powered by an ordinary electrical outlet and a burning board. And for those who did not have special artistic abilities, or simply for beginner pyrographers, special stencils were offered in abundance, including those made of metal, allowing both adults and children to create unique works of art!
With the onset of certain changes, with the advent of new entertainment, with the development of advanced modern technologies, the former hobbies of burning, albeit with a stencil, gradually faded away. However, recently this type of individual creativity is again becoming quite widespread - pictures created using a burner are used to decorate the interiors of not only residential buildings, but also cafes or bathhouses. Moreover, more and more new devices for burning are appearing, allowing you to transform absolutely any wooden product into a real exclusive hand-made item, the uniqueness of which even a child can ensure!
Burning out designs on wood using a special portable device is a very exciting and exciting activity. People who are passionate about pyrography (as burning is called) can safely be called real artists. Some of them are capable of creating real works of art, which are complex compositions with intricate patterns and even entire paintings, varnished- fish and birds, images of strange butterflies and flowers, New Year's panels, etc. Some works cost quite a lot of money. So wood burning, in addition to the aesthetic component, when the craft pleases the eyes of its owner for a long time, can be a source of good income!
But in order to create even relatively simple ornament on a sanded wooden board, most often you first need to create a sketch of the design and then transfer it to the workpiece. Not every person has the talent of an artist. Therefore, many solve this problem by using black and white stencils for wood burning or special templates. There are a huge variety of them. You can get a stencil in a variety of ways:
- create it yourself;
- buy in a store;
- download from the Internet and print on a printer.
A stencil for wood burning can be an inscription, a pattern, a flower, some kind of graphic image, a copy of famous works of art, a photograph, and so on.
Getting a stencil
If you create a stencil yourself, everything is quite simple. A pattern, image or inscription is simply applied with a pencil onto unfolded paper, which easily allows you to correct mistakes and inaccuracies.
Purchased stencil or template, printed on a printer, completely ready for use. Today, both in stores and especially on the Internet, there is an almost limitless variety of different patterns, from the simplest ones that both a beginner and a child can handle, to very complex patterns or graphic compositions. How to transfer a sketch to a tree will be discussed below.
A very fashionable trend nowadays is to transfer various photographic images onto a wooden plate. These can be photographs of family and friends, animals, historical and architectural landmarks. To create a photo stencil you will need:
- digital copy of photo;
- computer photo editor;
- peripheral printing device (printer).
The photo is loaded into a graphic editor in order to remove colors to black and white and slightly reduce image quality. When the photograph loses color contrast, it is printed on a printer.
Using a stencil
In order to transfer a sketch to a wooden plank or other workpiece, you must perform the following steps:
- place copy paper on the workpiece with the working surface facing down;
- place a finished stencil, template or sketch on top;
- secure the structure with adhesive tape or another method;
- Using a pencil or pen, carefully draw all the lines and elements that the inscription, pattern or image contains.
After the sketch and carbon paper have been removed from the workpiece, you must carefully examine the resulting drawing and, if necessary, correct poorly translated lines and details with a pencil, “play” with their thickness and make some other additional corrections.
That's it, now you can start burning future work of art!
Using pyrography, you can create a wide variety of decorative items or things that are simply necessary in the household. Burning is used to decorate cutting boards, wooden cutlery sets, snuff boxes, toys and other household items.
Wood burning requires creativity, patience and perseverance, as well as a lot of time to process any item. But in return, a person receives indescribable aesthetic pleasure and a beautiful individual item that will delight a person throughout his life.
And the pleasure children get from the burning process is simply impossible to describe in words! It’s no wonder that both on the Internet and in stores there is such a wide variety of stencils for burning, designed specifically for children. They contain various motifs, plots and levels of complexity. We must not forget that pyrography develops a child’s artistic taste, develops his horizons, instills in him the skills of self-discipline, ability to work, patience and perseverance.