To start off with:

If you are familiar with my tutorial on intermediate shading, it will help you understand the principals I am building off of for this last level of shading.

A portrait can be the most challenging theme to recreate with good value and shading because you are trying mostly to make the work of art look like an accurate depiction of who you are drawing. This again is why it seems to be the best way for me to illustrate these concepts, but they of course apply to any type of piece that you are doing.

We have spent some time identifying shapes, and learning to see objects we are drawing or burning in shapes. Those shapes are not necessarily what we think we see… the outline of a face, the square surface of a building… but we see the shadows and light reflecting. The most realistic picture will not be one that captures what our brains interpret the image to be, but what our eyes actually see. (For example, we may not see a defined line on one side of a persons face at all, depending on lighting, but when we look at the person; our brain interprets the shape… even if we can’t visually see it.)

When you first look at a face for example your mind begins to process information from the general information such as face shape, down to the little details which follow in logical progression because they all relate to the general details. (i.e. the eyes in relation to the face and then to the other features, then to the eye details.) By understanding how your mind processes information on a daily basis, you then have to change gears and stop taking that approach. Oh, this may work fine for your design and outline, but not when creating your final piece.

When you look at a portrait your first instinct is to see a line in your mind around the face… this is what you “think you see”. When you look at it with a more artistic eye and try to see what your eye actually see before your brain messes with the image, you don’t see lines or a logical breakdown of parts, you see shapes and shadows that blend into each other. You may look at a portrait and you know where the line for the chin and cheek may be, but what you actually see with your eye is that this “line” in the picture or real life face may disappear in parts of the image… the tonal value of the chin to the next may actually make that line invisible for several inches. By trying to recreate what I saw, and not what I thought I saw has made a huge difference for me in my own work.

The idea of “photo realism” for pyrography can actually be limiting since you can add much more detail to a piece than you could see with your eye or in a photo. It also limits the look you can create by “exaggerating” the shading.

Intermediate vs. Advanced

Let me start by explaining the primary difference between what I referred to as intermediate and advanced shading, and then we will go over the project in more detail.

In the intermediate level of shading we left the different areas of tonal value clear and distinct. It is a vital step, because in the advanced shading, although those areas will blend together and be less defined… unless you can see the shapes in your mind, you will have a difficult time trying to recreate the same over all shape without being able to reproduce the shapes of the shadows that make up the object as accurately as you can.

The reason that shapes of shadows become so important is that even when we want that shape to loose its definition, we want the value from dark to light to follow that shape as we blend it out so that it gives us still that shape that defines the overall shape of the subject.

When working with pencil or pyrography, the challenge is the lack of ability to rely on color to define any space, you rely only on tonal value. For this reason, in my opinion a burn or drawing looks much better if instead of trying to duplicate a photo, you animate or “exaggerate” it.

Let me explain what I mean. If you compare the original photo I used to the finished burn you will see a much more subtle difference in tonal values in the photo. The dark shaded areas I think of as the “black” are smaller areas and not as dark. The highlighted portions of the photo I think of as the pure “white” areas… are very tiny, if they even exist at all. If I were to try to reproduce the photo exactly as I saw it I would have to burn almost the entire surface of the face, and the differences in the values of the shadows would be subtle and not reveal as much shape. (This is because our minds interpret more of the shape than we actually see.) What you will see in the burn however are the “black” areas are exaggerated… larger and deeper. On the other end, the highlights are also much larger areas as well… I have left a great deal of space completely unburned. I have not made it darker or lighter than the photo, but amplified both light and dark areas. This is what I mean by “exaggeration”.

I think by doing this you get a very nice three dimensional look that renders very well for monochromatic mediums. This is my opinion, and it is what creates the look and style of the pieces I produce.

Although you don’t want to limit the different values of tone you can use for any picture, I still mentally set the picture up just as I did for the intermediate shading. I break it down to pretty much 4 values. This helps set up this “exaggerated” method of shading and is also how I will outline the picture on the wood before I start. The lightest and darkest areas are the “black” and “white” areas that I will burn as dark as I can, or leave unburned. Then I have areas that I shade dark, (not “black”) and areas I shade light. You can think of every “shape” on the picture as different values. As you advance you can do as many value areas or shapes as you want, not limiting it to four. But even if the design is in 4 values… unlike the sketch I ended with in intermediate shading that left those areas separate… when I do the final burning, I blend many of those areas together. Blending them together then uses every tonal value between the highlighted areas to the very darkest in a limitless number of values of tone. By beginning with 4 values, it helps keep the areas and shapes defined and your contrast high. By keeping your contrast high in a drawing and a burn, you define the shadows and shapes and help “exaggerate” them to really make the picture “pop”.

In the sketch from the intermediate tutorial, you can see clearly the distinct shapes of the shadows, as I have not blended them into each other. You can see where the shadow starts and stops, this scetch is the way I set up a photo to be a pattern for a pyrographed portrait.

I have had people tell me that my final piece looks just like a photo. They mean it as a compliment of course, and I always take it that way and am grateful for their generosity. The truth however is that if it did look just like a photo, they probably wouldn’t like it as well.

Following the "Rules"...

Now the rules for outlining and my own method for blending the shaded areas (or shapes) together… Those rules are like the rules you learned in English class, not math. I mean once you start reading you can get confused because there are all sorts of words that violate every law governing the English language.

How that translates into art and wood burning is that I break the rules all the time. True enough that if you outline a face it will not look natural at all, but there are certain areas that the shadow is deep and can even create what may look like a hard line. One example is that normally if light is coming from the side of a face… the side facing the light will have a very soft line, or no line at all defining the chin or cheek. The side in the shadow however can leave a very distinct line on the face defining the cheek and chin on that side very well. In those cases I will outline the chin and cheek… at least on that side of the face and then fade it out where it disappears in the light. This can leave me a very nice line to shade from.

Anywhere I know I will be burning my “black” values when I shade, I normally outline everything. This gives me a good point of reference for the other things I will be adding to the picture that I can’t draw on the wood first because I will be burning too light for pencil lines that will become permanent once I burn over them. Parts of the eyes are another area where I do it, and in the hair. Most of the outlines either disappear or become more subtle once I shade. There are also some subjects I do like buildings, that I outline almost completely… it really is a matter of how stylized or realistic you want a piece to look, and which look you prefer. It is a matter of taste and there are fine artists on both ends of the spectrum.

The other rule I mentioned breaking is that there are areas of shadow that look best if blended together. One that comes to mind first is the highlight on the forehead. It normally looks best if I can blend it as best I can to leave almost no line at all defining my shadow from the highlight. I use a slow fade from dark to light blending it together as best as I can. And yet on other areas, particularly around the nose, mouth, and eyes… the blending is much more abrupt, and in some cases I like to leave a clear shape of tonal value. An example would be a direct shadow… like the shadow cast onto the face from the nose. It will leave a much more defined line than some of the other shadows that are not cast, but created by the shape of the face.

The Process of the Project:

The first picture is simply the photo I am using for the portrait. The second picture I wanted to show what the transferred image or sketch looks like before I begin the burning process.

You can see, just as in the sketch earlier, I have clearly and distinctly marked areas which are very defined of shadow and drawn only the outline of those areas. I will erase those lines before burning the area, so they do not become permanent parts of the final piece.

You can see as I progress, my method is to start from the darkest areas and work my way out. I think a common mistake is to burn too light, don't be afraid to burn dark, it makes a pyrographed image much richer. Notice I am still burning in "shapes" and I blend them together as I go and many of them disappear or at least now they become more subtle. Also as I mentioned I am outlining some of the areas around his chin and clothing. This will help me once I shade by leaving a much cleaner and more "crisp" looking line than one left just by shading to the edge only.

You probably have already noticed again how this does NOT look like the photo; (scan down to the bottom to see a larger image compared next to the photo.) it looks like a pyrograph, which is exactly what we want. You can see the "exaggerated" difference between the original photo and the final piece. You can tell I have created more contrast and left larger areas of highlight. I can also make changes to the tone of the clothing, allowing me to include greater detail than in the photo. Every artist will interpret a piece differently as they create it, and they will more than likely see different shapes in the face and shadows than I do. That is what makes your work your own, and because it is your own, it becomes even more special to those loved ones you create pieces for.

Some Final thoughts:

The constant battle, and one that perhaps few if any pyrographers every win perfectly is the consistency of the burn. Of course keeping your tip in constant motion and not pausing on the wood is one of the first things we learn to do to prevent the big dark blotches in our work. Burning in layers also helps.

With the nature of the medium, as well as the nature of using wood which is never perfect in the consistency of its density, value can be a challenge. What we are all trying to avoid is blotches, lines, dark spots etc. Of course we chance the value intentionally to create texture and shape, but when we can control where the “dark spots” are then we control the shape and texture of the piece.
The best tips I can give for how to accomplish this are light pressure, and consistent speed. I am heavy handed as a burner so the light pressure has taken me a lot of practice and I still have to catch myself and lighten up on it from time to time. If you press at all the blade will catch the wood more which makes it a challenge to keep your speed consistent. You will also “dig in” when you hit a soft spot and that will make it darker, soft spots burn faster anyway, so it can be very difficult to master this. The light pressure is really a way of accomplishing what is perhaps the key to consistent value, and that is the consistent speed.

Keeping your speed consistent is how you keep the value consistent. Any dark spots are created by slows in the speed of your hand, and in soft spots in the wood. Once your speed is consistent and your pressure light, then layering can help even out the difference in tone created by the imperfections in the wood density.

I may not burn in layers the same way as many may do; I start in my dark areas and burn out to the light… a habit I picked up by painting with water colors. I start deep and dark and speed up to lighten up the stroke as it fades to a lighter part of the shadow. I do however still end up going over the area several times in an effort to smooth out the consistency of the tonal value of the burn. I try as best I can to keep the values smooth and avoid the blotches that inevitably happen when burning with wood. Most of the time I am frustrated and because you get focused on such small areas of the picture, I see things much more amplified than you can once you set the piece down and step back. It is then that I find the efforts were worth it, because although it may not be perfect, by trying to get it perfect the flaws are minimal enough the piece still turns out great.