Pyrography Boat

Hi all,
In my last post I said I was working on something big and that I'd share it with you in this post. Well, I don't know what it is about Christmas, but time just flies past and before we know it the first green leaves will be appearing on the hawthorn hedges. Just like every previous Christmas, I have only managed to do a fraction of what I thought I be able to do. Before Christmas, I had visions of spending lots of time reading, drawing and doing some pyrography, but it wasn't to be.

I did manage a bit of pyrography, but not as much as I had planned; I will show you how far I got at the end of this post. This current pyrography project has been zooming around my head for a few months and it's a departure from what I have done up to now. Not only is the subject matter different but also the size. This is the biggest bit of pyrography I have ever attempted and it measures 14 inches x 11inches; that's approximately 33cm x 28cm if you've been metricised.

Getting a piece of wood to do something so big on was difficult. They don't make plaques that size and birch faced plywood of the right quality for pyrography work is very expensive, so I went for veneer. I got it off eBay and it came in a roll with the adhesive already applied to the back. All I had to do was iron it onto a piece of MDF. I say all, I didn't have a spare piece of MDF lying about, so I had to get a big panel of the stuff from B&Q. Still, I've got plenty left over for future projects.

Anyway, I was bit apprehensive about using veneer for pyrography because it looks mighty thin, but I needn't have worried because it burns just like real wood. I said earlier that this project had been spinning around in my head for a while, well, all I could envisage was a big boat that had been dragged up onto a shingle beach. So I drew the image straight onto the wood. This was another departure from my usual method whereby I usually draw the whole composition on paper and then modify it on my computer before transferring it to the wood.

In this project, I drew the boat and a bit of rope and then burnt them straight on to the veneer. Once the outline of the boat was done, I set about drawing the shingle directly onto the veneer with my pyrography iron. I reasoned that if I've got to draw every single stone on that beach then it would make sense to do it once only. Below you can see the progress made so far, so keep watching this space to see how it develops. Because it hasn't been preplanned, I'm looking forward to to see what happens too. One thing is for sure, there is a lot of work to be done before this one is finished.