Yesterday I spent a long time playing around with my Blog's design. I learned so much about adding gadgets and changing attributes. Fun - fun - fun!
Today I want to introduce you to Blue Heron on a log. This beautiful bird was stalking his prey when we saw him across the river. My husband was floating around in his Kayak and let himself drift downstream toward this heron. He was able to snap several pictures. This is the one I chose to turn into a pyrography piece.
The lighting and time of day were not studio perfect, but I loved the depth in this particular photo. Using enhancement software I sharpened and lightened up the picture. Next, I erased the elements that I was not going to include in my wood burned piece.
Then next step was to render the photo to grey scale. Shading and Lighting in the fore, middle and background were tweaked before I had the program find the edges. A bit more tweaking and then I had a usable trace patterns.
Transferring the outline onto the birch ply board was accomplished using carbon paper. The cons to using this method is that the lines are not easy to get rid of. They don't erase or wash off well and when you burn a heavy inked line it is dark and not always the shade or width you might desire. Sometimes you can sand away the offending area, but not always as the heated ink absorbs into the wood. For this reason I try to minimize the amount of details I add in this step and then use a pencil and sketch in more details to burn using the outline and other pictures as a reference.
When I am wood burning I take it one section at a time and completely detail it. My favorite part on this piece were the feathers - especially on the wings. They seem daunting for there are hundreds of tiny lines on each feather - but - Wow! As each feather is finished they are so beautiful, and as more are finished the bird just seemed to appear. (I admit I get tunnel vision and time slips away from me as I work.)
This piece is currently listed on my Etsy Store if you are interested in owning it.
That's all for today.
- Take Care -
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