The Basic Woodburning Tool
Basic Woodburning Strokes and Textures
Woodburning Scene Samples
Step by Step Instructions Project
Working With Watercolors
Adding Skin Color to your Portraits

The Color Wheel or Who is Roy G. Biv?
NEW! Wood Burning Sepia Values
NEW!  Wood Burning Animal Fur and Hair

Landscape Wood Burning eProject

Paper mache is a product create by mixing finely shredded paper scraps with a white glue based media.  This makes the paper mache easy to shape and very firm in consistency - a great burning surface.  I have found paper mache requires a hotter temperatures than wood, it is compatible to burning on paper or cloth fiber surface.  Be patient as you work the burning up to deep color tones.

Burn this design as one unit going right around the corners on the petals, center and butterfly to keep your tonal values even.  Leave the highlight areas inside of the sunflower petals, center and butterfly unburned.

In the next steps we will be using colored pencils as our coloring agent.  Watercolors and artist quality acrylic paints well thinned with water are also excellent medias for adding color over a paper mache burning.

If you have not worked in light layer burning please visit our tutorials Wood Burning Sepia Values and Wood Burning Animal Fur and Hair for in-depth instructions. 

  Paper mache often requires hotter temperature settings than a wood surface.  Experiment with your settings to see which give you the best results.
There are two great advantages to trying paper mache - the cost is minimal and there is a great variety of shapes available.
    

There are several grades of colored pencils available for the wood burner - artist color pencils, watercolor pencils and color pencil sticks.  Artist quality colored pencils use a wax base for the color pigment which keeps the colors transparent when they are properly applied.  The wax keeps the colors creamy and smooth during application. That transparency allows your wood burn tonal values to clearly show through the color work.

Watercolor artist pencils are also a great coloring agent.  These pencils are applied just as the artist quality pencils.  Once the coloring has been worked you can use a lightly moistened brush over the pencils to turn the colors into moveable/workable paint.

Because the colors are transparent you can lay one color over another to create new color hues.  Develop you pencil work in very light, very thin layers of color.  The first several color layers are barely visible.  It is not until your reach the fourth or fifth layer that you will begin seeing the color over each area.  

Stick color pencils are often used for large area application because of their thickness.  A few selected background colors make a great addition to your color pencil set.

Keep your pencils extremely sharp.  This helps to keep the pencil work on the high, unburned or lightly burned areas of your design. 

In this project I first laid several very thin layers of pale yellow colored pencil over all of the sunflower petals.  A few thin layers of white were added over that pale yellow to create the highlights.  Orange and red tones were then added for my shadow areas.  This creates one sunflower petal with color shades from very white through the yellows into the rich red orange tones.

Hobby grade color pencils are often clay based and become cloudy or milky when used.  Using an inexpensive colored pencil set can ruin a wonderful wood burning quickly.

Most wood burn designs can be easily colored using a twelve pencil set of artist quality colors.  They are well worth the investment.
    

Develop your design with very thin layers of color.
My first color for any area will be the middle color working 3 to 5 layers.  I then add my highlight and shadow colors over that middle color to create new color hues.  This sample has about six layers of color work in the petal areas.

In this sample you can see the finished color work.  By adding many more thin layers I have established very bright yellow areas with white highlights for the petal and red orange shadow areas in the center area.  

The butterfly was worked in greens, grey blues and pale yellow.  The center area of the sunflower has been worked in red, red brown and burnt umber color pencils to create the dark tones of the seed area with a few layers of white for highlights.

Since paper mache tends to be a dull grey brown color I added layers of deep blue, deep green and black to the background areas.  The darkest areas near the petals were created by giving these areas extra layers of pencil.
   

The pattern for this sample is available in the "Great Book of Floral Patterns" by L. S. Irish.

Wet Canvas at www.wetcanvas.com is a great source for more information on color pencil art.

Once the pencil work is completed you will want to seal the outside surface of your wine caddy with several light layers of polyurethane or acrylic spray sealer.  

Because the substrate to paper mache is a white glue based media your spray sealer will have a splotchy cloudy appearance when first applied.  After the piece has been allowed to dry thoroughly, at least one half hour per coat, that splotchy effect will disappear to a crystal clear finish.

Stitch the sides of bag together along the seam allowance then stitched the bottom square to the bag.  Make a folded ruffle from a strip of fabric two inches wide by 30" long and stitched that to the top.

Turn the fabric lining tube inside out so that the right side of the fabric will show inside of your caddy.  With a hot glue gun adhere the lining to the paper mache caddy so that the ruffle is above the top edge of the caddy.

Add a bottle of wine or several skeins of nice wool sock yarn and knitting needles or a few bright silk flowers and you will have a prefect holiday gift for someone of your list.
   

   
Woodburning 101 By L. S. Irish
The Basic Woodburning Tool
Basic Woodburning Strokes and Textures
Woodburning Scene Samples
Step by Step Instructions Project
Working With Watercolors
Adding Skin Color to your Portraits
The Color Wheel or Who is Roy G. Biv?
NEW! Wood Burning Sepia Values
NEW!  Wood Burning Animal Fur and Hair

Article Courtesy of Classic Carving Patterns
CarvingPatterns.com
Copyright L. S. Irish, 1997 - 2008