PYROGRAPHY

A New Website Section by Trimingham Resident

Mike Lawrence

Creator of the Backinbirdland Blogspot and Contributor to this Website of the Natural History Page

 

PYROGRAPHY

“Writing with Fire”

The latest contributions made by Mike Lawrence appear immediately below.  If you want to appreciate the skills and technology necessary to achieve such results, just look further down this webpage, where all is revealed.

New Burns

The Latest:    July 1st 2023

I have worked on some larger pieces so far this year, the first is a pair of Kingfishers that I got finished in time to show at the Trimingham Art Exhibition in April. 

My next big piece took some considerable time as it was 3 different images on the one piece, this was of the musician Jean Michel Jarre, depicting his Oxygene albums. Since my teens I have listened to his music and rightfully so was playing in the background when I worked on the piece. 

October 27th 2022

Archangel Raphael

Keifer Sutherland in “The Lost Boys”

Tom Cruise in “The Last Samurai”

Keanu Reeves in “47 Ronin”

The Legend “Bobby Moore”

“Ray Winstone”

Rik Mayal & Ade Edmondson in “Bottom”.

 

EARLIER BURNS

 

This piece is of a Harrier Jump Jet at San Carlos Bay on the Falkland Islands. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the south atlantic conflict, the Harrier was such an iconic plane and this is the second Harrier burn I have completed, the first was one landing on a German autobahn during the cold war era.

The Highland Cow. I was asked to burn a commission piece of a Highland cow and was eager to try something new, there were so many hairs to burn!!

I have been getting more involved with trying portraits of actors and famous people, it’s still a game of learning on each new piece and stressfully challenging. When looking for new subjects Winston Churchill stood out and I couldn’t resist, and I am very happy with the outcome considering a lot of reference images were from some time ago and not always sharp enough to work from, but the colouration from the burning adds an old sepia type photo feel to it.

Next up and keeping in the World War 2 era and a favourite of mine from “Dad’s Army”, Captain Mainwaring. I absolutely love watching these programmes and never fail to laugh through them, every now and again there is an episode that I have never seen before which is a lovely surprise. This was a more detailed piece to work on and more texture to burn, but the end result was rewarding and perhaps another character from the show may be on the short list soon.

Portrait of the Virgin Mary, a burn of a painting from the 1600’s, a very serene composition and another religious piece which I really like to portray. 

There are so many great old paintings depicting angels/religion etc that I will be encouraging myself to find some more.

 

 

 

PYROGRAPHY

“Writing with Fire”

Also known as woodburning, although pyrography can be used on various materials, it is the art of burning using a heated element. I use a heated wire tip set-up, with various interchangeable wire tips to create the desired effect and detailing.

As you can see it’s pretty much like a soldering iron with different changeable tips, and with this unit I can control the temperature that the tips burn at, which in turn gives me more control of the finished piece of art being burnt ( a electric current passes through the wire tips creating a burning element)

I use hardwoods to burn on as the tips can be too severe on softwoods and create what looks like burnt blob marks rather than detail, imagine a ink pen on blotting paper and this same spread effect is similar when the tip is applied too hot/on too soft wood. This is where controlling the temperature comes into its own, I can start by lighter detailing and work up to darker burn areas when needed. I will also use white paint to create highlights if it is needed.

Here you can see the 3 types of tips I have used on this Kingfisher piece.

Since taking up the art of pyrography earlier this year (May 2020) I have become addicted to creating pieces of art using this technique, from wildlife portraits to military aircraft to movie poster/scenes. Work is available to purchase and commissions are considered. Here are some completed burns’.

 

 

December 23rd 2020

DANCE OF DEATH

Alfred Rethel: Death as Assassin

On this woodburning piece I was asked to portray the Skeleton from Alfred Rethel’s wood engraving. The piece of art by Rethel is also known as “Dance of Death: Death as Strangler”.  The piece refers to an event in Paris in 1831 with the first outbreak of Cholera.  Rethel was influenced by images of death in a lot of his work.

All through this ‘burn I kept myself to working in sections. I would map out where the lines and detail would go and then carefully burn it in. This was a real tricky piece to work on and I wanted to keep it as close to the original design as possible.

It was important to take my time and be careful I didn’t bleed the burn lines into the next row. I have no idea how many squares and lines are burnt into this study, but I do know it took me 15 hours to complete. I burnt it on a nice thick piece of oak which was pale enough to make the detail stand out.

The completed burn

 

 

COLD WAR HARRIER

When I first drew this piece up for a ‘burn’, I posted it on social media and straight away a previous customer of mine contacted me to purchase it!!  I hadn’t even started so now the pressure was on not to make a mistake in this complex piece. The customer is a plane enthusiast and I burnt a Vulcan Bomber for him previously, but this time his wife contacted me for a Christmas present, so we decided between us that I would post progress photos on my instagram account that he could see, but every time I declared it was meant for my brother…cunning plan that worked as he had commented that he was jealous of my brother receiving it! And so the work began.

This ‘burn depicted a Harrier Jumpjet, during the cold war period, landing on a German Autobahn (motorway) this was iconic of the Harrier where it could land almost anywhere. It was a tricky one to work on as the reference photo was some years old and it had a lot of different depths of field to work on, some in detail and some out of focus almost, giving the whole piece a scenic image front to back. I decided to start on the jet itself first, this was the main focus area.

I then worked on the central reservation barriers, letting you know it was a motorway (autobahn) and not a runway!

Then I moved on to the tree line behind, not detailing the trees too much so they stayed looking in the distance and didn’t compete for detail with the Harrier. This immediately gave it a lot of depth to the scene.

The large tree to the side of the carriageway was next and this had to be more detailed but not to detract from the jet, just enough that it sits behind. Finally I added a small amount of white paint to highlight just a few areas on the Harrier, road markings and signage which all added to the depth of the scene and made things ‘pop’. And the surprise worked a treat and was very much welcomed on Christmas morning.

 

 

The Bittern ‘Burn

From metal birds to feathered birds, my next piece of work was a Bittern. I have painted quite a few Bitterns before and found their camouflaged plumage so nice to paint, this was the first time I had burnt one though!. Choosing a nice piece of oak I set about using one of my photographs for the work, burning the plumage onto the wood as opposed to painting would add to the effect.

I started on the bill and eye, the eye almost has a reptile type look to it, that intense stare as the birds stay motionless whilst hunting in the reed beds, simply vanishing away if you take your eye off them, indeed when I have watched these stunning birds before, one can be a matter of feet in front of you, craning its neck up to the sky blending in amongst the reeds, this is where the streaky feather patterning comes into play, such a peculiar but fascinating bird.

Starting on those streaky feather lines running down the entire length of the bird. I added some reed stems into the composition but not so many as to detract from the bird and the detail.

And finally the finished piece.

No. 12 Squadron RAF

For this burn I returned to aircraft with a double jet study, the Buccaneer and Tornado. From the 60s The Buccaneers were used as a British carrier-capable attack aircraft, notably an anti-shipping bomber. The 12 squadron Buccaneers moved into RAF Honington in 1969, later moving to RAF Lossiemouth in Morayshire during 1980. They were retired in 1993 after a long career. During the 1991 Gulf War, personnel from all three Buccaneer squadrons at Lossiemouth, including No. 12 Squadron, took part in Operation Granby, the aircraft’s first combat operation. They operated as target designators and it became common for each attack formation to comprise four Tornados and two Buccaneers. Upon retiring the 12 Squadron Buccaneers were replaced by the the Panavia Tornado, a twin-engine, variable-sweep wing multirole combat aircraft, jointly developed and manufactured by Italy, the United Kingdom and West Germany. All Tornado aircraft were due to be withdrawn from RAF operations by the end of 2015 but ended up retiring in 2018. 

I decided to burn the Tornado first, initially it was going to be 2 Tornado jets but I was educated by my youngest brother on the connection between the Buccaneers and Tornado jets attached to 12 Squadron so it seemed fitting to continue with that, the Fox is used as the badge emblem.

Tornado

Progress on the Buccaneer

Buccaneer & Tornado

 

A very well known view, the boardwalk leading onto Holkham Beach. There’s a lot of details put into this one, especially the grasses growing around the fenceline.

This was a fun piece to burn, a commission piece for Dot next door, I wanted to create that stone look and what I didn’t notice until I had finished the burn, where the arm sits right on the very edge of the wood actually made it seem the arm was hanging over giving it a 3D look as you can see in the image below.

The iconic Happisburgh Lighthouse.

I moved onto a couple of film themed burns next, from the great film “The Hobbit”. One piece was a silhouette of the Hobbit, Gandolf and Dwarves crossing the mountains, this consisted of paint on the backdrop too, and one of my most challenging but favourite works, Bilbo Baggins opening and stepping out the front door of his hobbit house.

F-15 Eagles from Lakenheath Airforce Base, regularly seen overhead here on most days, I had been wanting to do an Eagle burn for some time, but finally I got round to it.

 

December 23rd 2021

JAWS

It’s been a busy time as of late, I seem to be moving from one piece of art to the next, it’s good practice moving from Pyrography back to paintings and drawings then back to burning. So here is the first Pyro’ piece. Depicting the 3 main actors in the first Jaws film, Brody, Quint and Hooper, this was a challenge as I haven’t and am not confident with people and faces so when it actually turned out okay it encouraged me to try new subjects in the future. And it didn’t take long to be sold to a regular customer.

Archangel Michael defeating Satan

Once I started this burn I thought to myself WHY? The amount of detail was a task and a half, I had to set about burning in stages so as to keep on top of the detailing. The original image was dated from 1636 by artist Guido Reni, and I liked the idea of using Pyrography to portray it and to open up possibilities of further religious burns, it is a subject that I have been wanting to embrace for some time and as I progress more in this art I am able to take on more challenging topics ( as of writing I have started on another angel piece ) It took 25 hours to complete and I enjoyed every hour.

 

“Fallen Angel”

This was a piece I’d wanted to burn for some time now and couldn’t wait to get going on it. It had had to take a back seat a few times when other work took priority. The Fallen Angel is a painting by Alexandre Cabanel in 1847. He was a French artist and this piece depicts a moment in the story of the War in Heaven, possibly the instant Lucifer was expelled from the heavenly realm and landed in the terrestrial world. Branching into human form and character this was another new learning curve for me and challenging in the details. It is burned onto Basswood.

 

 

Lest We Forget

WW1 British Army in the trenches.

This burn took quite a few hours to complete, there were a lot of tones and textures to portray. 

Troops lined up to go over the top, and started off the trench sides, trying to depict the narrow rough channels they moved through.

The silhouette of the first soldier over the top and the next man scrambling up the trench side, top detailing now concentrated on the barbed wire and smoke above the trench.

The final burning of the plume of smoke coming from the battlefield drew this burn to an end, very different from previous subjects but I was happy how the scene turned out, and a burn that has so much emotion behind it.