Thursday, August 21, 2008

A Little Woodburning


"Matisse Comes To Visit" 3.5" x 8" on white pine

I'm almost certain you all have had a chance to do a little woodburning at some time in your life. I bought a standard issue plug in model with interchangeable tips for my kids about 15 years ago when they were little and, yeah, they tried it, and they liked it, and it went into the drawer and didn't come out again until about the year 2000. I think I got it out on a Thanksgiving and passed it around with a piece of wood and everybody at the table burned something. It was pretty boring until we got out the watercolors and then, all of a sudden, I was interested. I pick it up from time to time and I guess I've done at least a dozen including some pretty big ones, like 22 x 50 for which I had to make my own tools that I heat in the forge. They're all fun. The ones below are small except for the very bottom one which is about 10 x 18 on vertical grain Douglas fir. That one took a minute. Click to enlarge ...


"The Cubist" 3.5" x 9" on white ash

" Here's Miro !" 3.5 x 10 on white pine

"Dale Chihuly Comes For Dinner" 3.5 x 7" on pine

Tools of the trade ... Watercolors and water soluble Windsor Newton oils

"The Lamp"

This one I did with the forge tools below because it's bigger. And, because it was, I did also a little more planning. I'm not sure if that was good or bad .... or if it made the piece better or worse ...
This one, even though it was bigger, was done in watercolor, the middle picture being from about the middle of the painting process ....
'Moon Over The Mettowee' ... 20 x 45 and
'Cornfields 1' ... 16 x 35
The big, forge heated woodburning tools I made

1 comment:

Kathi said...

Fantastic idea! Thanks so much for sharing! I think I'll go dig out my old and rusty woodburning tool and see what I can come up with?
:D