The Outlining Technique allows the gourd artist to use images on a round gourd that can be painted. Every gourd artist depends on this basic skill to create great gourds. Let’s take a closer look.
An accomplished gourd artist who has mastered pyrography skills will be able to apply the right tone, texture, and lines using several tips on each project.
I was introduced to a wood burner at a patch meeting. When I attended my first class, the time was spent on outlining an image taken from the Internet. This is important because most people starting this artform can’t draw. We cannot apply paint, dyes, or inks on a curved surface without it running everywhere.
It is the outline that creates a ditch to confine our product to the area we want to color until it dries. This is the only pyrography skill you will need if wood burning is not your interest. But learning to burn an outline on a gourd does have to meet a standard and practice is the only way to master it. Any quick look at a gourd will reveal if the artist understands how it should be done. In competition, your painting may be wonderful, but if your burnt outline is not done correctly, you will lose points. After mastering this technique, the rest is easier.
The Outlining Technique Tools
You will need a skew or better yet, a spear tip for your handle. Hopefully, you have already cleaned some shards. I sand them quickly with 600 or 800 grit Abernet sandpaper which you can buy a sample piece on the store page.
Just before I start and if it feels dry, I wipe it with Formula 49 or a little Murphy’s oil. Have something handy like a tea strainer, piece of denim, or leather to wipe your tip on if it gathers carbon
The Outlining Technique Stroke
You hold the handle like a pencil, but it does not move like one. You have a fire at the end!
If you set it down on the gourd and then think about starting a line you just created a black hole!!
Instead, think of the tip as an airplane landing and then lifting off from a runway. The tip gently lands on the line and continues to the end and then gently lifts. The tip flows consistently down the line slowly and steadily. You might need to use your little finger as a tripod to steady the handle and you then relax and focus on the line.
My other important beginners tip is to not look where you have been, or where you are at, but instead focus your eyes on the line ahead of you and just trust the handle will exactly follow your eye. Because it will!
Always relax and focus on where you are going and begin to find that zone where nothing else is happening but the process of moving the tip across the gourd.
We are training the hand and mind to work together in a familiar repetitive action. That is why patient and practice is need here.
How deep should the ditch be?
It does not have to be deep and wide. Everyone seems to come up with different depths. It is all about the pressure you put on the handle. Each of us has a different comfortable zone for consistent pressure. This is what is meant when we say we have a heavy hand or a light hand. Everyone develops their cutting style. Look at these three gourds and the width of the line. They all will look right when finished, yet at this stage, the burning line style is visible.
Outlining Technique: The width of the line establishes your style
If you want the thin line, then you will have to focus on what that amount of pressure feels like and keep repeating it until you have it consistently without thinking about it. But the depth is not as important as consistency and accuracy.
Practice Exercise
Begin with straight lines drawn with a pencil on a shard. Now think about where your tip will land and continue to slowly move over the line. Take a breath and relax. Only the hundredth one will be perfect!
Once you are bored with that, have a rest then pick up another shard and create squares, rectangles, and triangles. Your goal here is to find out exactly where the tip stops when it lifts.
You want the lines to just touch, not go over each other. Some people don’t connect the lines as they draw, but come back and reverse the line taking small strokes to touch each other. If a hour has gone by then quit. Come back tomorrow and do the same strokes for just 15 minutes then move on to another exercise.
What does excellent outlining look like?
When done well, a simple straight-line cut can be elegant. No color is needed here. After you have spent only a few minutes trying this you can appreciate the practice needed to do work like this. Even I am not at this stage! So do be patient with yourself and don’t give up. The more you do the better you get.
Straight lines can also be used for texture. Watch Sue Walter demonstrate on wood. Then give it a try.
Flower Pattern Egg
This project is using wooden eggs, but a little egg gourd will be great, Simple pattern and lots of tips She also shows how she colors with watercolor.
Let me know if this was helpful.
Share your thoughts here in the comment box or share them with all the gourd artists on our Facebook Group Page.
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