Bluebirds and Dandelions

Hi All, I have just completed a sketch for my next pyrography project, but before I show you that I thought it would be nice for you to see what my wife has been up to.

If you have been following these posts you will know that she is very skillful with the pyrography iron and that she also likes a nice splash of colour. Her latest bit of work follows the same pattern and I have included a picture for you below.

A chequered pattern in blue covers all sides of the box and on the top she has done a pair of swallows. It is a very nice box and one she should be proud of. By the way most of my wife's items are adorning our house but we are running out of space so she is going to start sellling some. You can find this box on http://www.burningdesire.folksy.com

Regarding my own pyrography, and following on from my last project where I depicted some dandelion seed heads on a trinket box. (This can be seen in the previous post). I decided to do a whole dandelion on a piece of white beech veneer.

So far I have done a rough sketch of the image that I am aiming to reproduce. Here is the method I followed so far
1 I cut a piece of MDF to the size of the frame I was going to use on the finished work.
2 I glued the veneer to the MDF.
3 On a sketch pad, I used a pencil to draw around the piece of MDF to give me the exact size.
4 I did a sketch of the dandelions and seed heads with a 4b pencil and once I was hapy with the composition I went over the pencil marks with a 005 Staedtler fine line pen. Then I used an eraser to remove any pencil marks.
5 Using a pencil, I roughly shaded in the sketch to give me a range of tones. It is my intention to have a light source partly behind the dandelion head to give it a warm glow, whilst also providing an area of darkness which will allow the feathery ends of the seed heads to show through. I say hopefully because it isn't always often that the vision in ones mind actually turns up on the finished piece.
6 I scanned the sketch into photoshop and adjusted the contrast to deepen the image and then printed it out so that I can transfer it to the veneer. I will file away my original sketch so that it will be availble for future use.

In my next post you will be able to see if it worked out as expected. By the way my wife asked me to add a PS to this post after she had edited it. So here it is.

PS My wife would like it to be known that the insperation for doing dandelions came from her. She says I stole her idea and I'll have to admit it, she's right.