Chestnut Leaves & Commissions

I have had a very busy week on the pyrography front. I started off by doing a sketch of some chestnut leaves for a bowl, but I had to put that on the back burner when I was commisioned to do a couple of plaques.

Commisions are strange, one minute you are doing your own thing and then all of a sudden life changes. You are no longer in charge of what you are doing and are working for somebody else. It's a bit like working in a factory but with out the journey.
Don't get me wrong, I like doing commisions because they help pay the bills but I wouldn't want to do them full time. I don't mind doing pyrography to order but deadlines can be quite daunting. Anyway, they are completed now and I should be able to get on and burn the leaves. Here is the sketch.

The first thing I did was to draw around the bowl to give me the exact size. Then I drew one leaf along the edge and repeated the pattern in an anti-clockwise direction. Everynow and again, I redrew a leaf to make it go under one of the others to give the design some depth. It looks quite a simple design, but there was a lot of rubbing out and redrawing to make sure it filled the bowl. I am looking forward to burning it with my pyrography iron and will show you the results in my next post, that is as long as a load of commisions don't get in the way.

Im my next post I will also say a bit about safety. The fumes that come from a pyrography iron can be dangerous, so now that I am doing more commisions I have taken action. Relying on a fan and an open window isn't good enough. However, I think I've found a cost effective solution.