Overview
Elegantly Decorate Gourds by learning the art of pyrography -- using heat to draw, carve, or scorch designs. You'll work with simple, state-of-the-art wood-burning pens and different tips that provide the perfect edge for everything from shaping fish scales to creating fine detail work on feathers. It's fun to find an appropriate gourd and easy to prepare the gourd, cleaning and removing the skin. Four artists walk you through several projects to show you the basic techniques. Create butterfly, floral, and geometric designs on a pear-shaped gourd, mastering a variety of techniques that will enable you to produce curving lines and little teardrops, among other eye-catching elements. Or turn that pear-shaped gourd into an owl by burning in a beak, eyes, wings, and feathers. Another project features a frog among blades of grass, surrounded by a salamander border. Try some lovely shading and stippling effects as you go along. Learn the techniques and secrets of 50 accomplished artists who provide you with direction and inspiration, using their gourds as examples. Dic Bonsett, for instance, prefers smaller tips that cut into the relatively soft shell easily, allowing you to control the depth of the burn. He also uses an adjustable clamp for the pencil layout work because it helps hold the gourd when he creates lots of repetitive, precise straight lines. For her inlaid design with black figures and spears, Sylvia White drew the figures on paper and made several copies. She taped them to the gourd and traced them through the paper with her wood burner on low, before filling them in. Other motifs range from a swimming turtle and flying hummingbirds to sunflowers and a lighthouse. Bonus: a photo gallery of magnificent jewelry, such as necklaces with matching earrings.Synopsis
Painted with fire, pyrographed gourds have existed for years but modern tools and solid-state woodburning systems have made fine detailing simpler than ever. Amply illustrated projects teach and inspire, as a parade of artists discuss their tools and techniques, and guide you through picking and preparing suitable gourds, forming delicate lines, spirals, and curves, and working through richly conceived designs. Plus: a gallery.
Library Journal
Gourd pyrography is a fancy phrase for the folk art of using heat to carve and scorch gourds. These beautiful objects are found in Nigeria, Kenya, Mali, Ghana, Senegal, China, Peru, Mexico, New Guinea, and the South Pacific. Early methods, involving fire and burning coals, have been superseded by modern tools and solid-state wood-burning systems. Here, four artists walk us through several projects using basic techniques, applying butterfly, floral, and geometric designs to pear-shaped gourds. Another project features a frog among blades of grass, surrounded by a salamander border. With pyrography pen charts, a list of supply sources, and a stunning gallery of works by 50 artists, this work-the author's third on gourd craft-is recommended for large art instruction and craft collections.