Woodburning Tips for Artists at any level
I am going to share some wood-burned gourds I have found that illustrate good design practices to help you see why the artwork is successful. By analyzing a gourd this way we can learn from the best.
I will tell you what I think works and doesn’t work. I taught Art for several years with Master Degrees in Art Education and Graphic Design. This topic is always subjective and you can certainly disagree with me.
By talking about these elements, I hope you can learn to be more critical of other’s work to help you understand what mastery means and how you can improve your artwork.
I will keep adding new enties on the top,so check back here often to learn something new.
When shading feathers or leaves, remember that the light hits the middle of the surface, then gets darker towards the edge. The darkest parts are where the shapes overlap. The tones on each shape should go from light, medium to dark. This sequence will give you depth.
A shading tip will work best. Practice achieving these tones on a shard. This is a basic technique you will use over and over.
Sometimes it is difficult for beginners to understand how all the burning techniques come together to create a realistic image. This design is in process Susan has outlined the frog, then started to shade in the dark areas with light tones. These will get darker with layering.
We can see two prominent shading strokes here. The stippling (little dots) on the body which provides a textural effect and short line strokes on the leaves. There are many more strokes ahead to give the frog more depth.
To the artist’s advantage is the size of the image. The larger it is, the easier it is for beginners to get it right.
Here is a gourd where you can see how thick the “ditch” is in comparison to the others on this page. The artist is using a burning pen as seen in the back ground. I find it a little had to use and useless if it doesn’t have a thermostat on it. But this artist is a painter and is looking for a deep line to keep her acrylics on the gourd. I must say the lines are smooth and consistent, just what we are looking for!