New Work- Garden Cats and adding color to your pyrography

​In between dealing with catching every virus bug around for the last two months and was probably sick more than well, I did manage to work on this gourd vase.  It follows a theme that has been part of an ongoing series of sorts..

...​of animals that would normally be enemies, or predator/prey and instead they are depicted as being friendly, even protective. 

​The cats sit among the flowers, with sparrows around them, even sitting with (and on!) them.  They don’t mind their presence. 

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My interest in this theme comes from this passage in the Bible, from Isaiah 11,
“The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,
    and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat,
and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together;
    and a little child shall lead them.
  The cow and the bear shall graze;
    their young shall lie down together;
    and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
  The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra,
    and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder's den.
  They shall not hurt or destroy
    in all my holy mountain;
for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord
    as the waters cover the sea..”

This cat looks a lot like my Pepper, but it is from a photo I found from Paint My Photo. This is a wonderful website resource for photos.  Photographers will upload their pictures and allow artists to use them for reference.  All you need to do in return in post a picture of your finished work with a note of thanks. 

​Here are some picture of B.C. (before color) and after color was added.  I used Faber Castel Polychromos colored pencils, they are my favorite pencils to use on gourds.  As you can see, I like to keep the colors subtle, almost like a colorized sepia photo. 
 
When using colored pencils over pyrography, you want to be careful not to layer so much that you lose the pyrography underneath.  Think of the pyrography as a tonal “underpainting”.  It is important that the shadows are established with the pyrography before the colored pencil is added. 

Here is a close up of my layout process for the Celtic knotwork on the bottom of the gourd, and after burning.  This was a bear to draw out but it was worth the effort. 

​If you are interested in learning how to layout a Celtic border for gourds, my next online course on this will be available in the next couple weeks.

A border like this would be impossible to trace off a paper pattern, the only way is to freehand it and my course will teach you how.

Celtic Border Pyrography for Gourds, available in April.