[Woodcarver]wood burned portrait tips-sylda

[Linehan718 at aol.com]

Hi Sylda,  I know my pics aren't very good, but that problem should be solved 
shortly-getting myself a nice digital cam for xmas, then I will work on my 
photography skills.  This was my first pyrography portrait.  what i did was, 
scan a picture into my pc-resized it and sharpened it and converted it to 
greyscale.  printed it out and used carbon paper to copy it to the wood.  I only 
worried about main features, the shape of the face and blocked out large areas of 
shading.  I know you can't see it by my pic but there is some very delicate 
shading in the burning, giving it an almost realistic look.  This was all done 
free hand with the original picture as my model.  I thought I had ruined it a 
few times but learned that as long as you don't scortch too deeply into the 
wood, you can use fine sandpaper to lighten up any area you need to.  I would 
burn then sand, burn again until I was happy with it.  when the burning was done, 
i then did stop cuts all around the top of the picture, to the depth of 3/8"( 
wood was 3/4" thick)  then dug it out and beveled it up to the remaining 
surface. then sanded it all smooth so that the portrait popped out from the wood.


Maura carvin' in nyc
http://www.picturetrail.com/whiteknight718
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