Writing With Fire: Snow White

Inspiration can come to you in all sorts of funny ways. My recent piece came to me after reading "Snow, Glass, Apples," a short piece Neil Gaiman had contributed to in the collection of vampire short stories - "By Blood We Live." On a brief note, it is a fantastic book to read if you're a fan of any of the number of authors who contributed to the collection and/or a vampire fan in general (excluding "Twilight" of course.)

Gaiman's piece was extremely dark, exploring a few macabre and taboo themes I won't dare mention here. My piece has more relevance to the Walt Disney animated feature film that we were all familiar with, yet it was the story which spurred my idea to think about Snow White. I find it so funny how things happen like that sometimes.



This is after I drew and burnt the image into wood. I drew this completely from my imagination, using only clip art from the internet as to what certain objects looked like such as the heart box and Art Nouveau type of illustrations. The little pencils marks you see are what I used as a guide on what I would and wouldn't paint on the piece.



This is the way it looked after I finished painting it. I didn't have any gold paint for the crown, so when I do, I'll be painting it gold. The things that are lodged in the apple are jewels to represent the dwarfs and I'm pondering on whether or not to paint them or leave them blank.

The next thing I'm going to do is paint this piece onto a canvas.

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Writing With Fire: Greta Garbo

Seeing as how I have new people following my blog, I decided to take a few pictures of what the process is like for when I do one of my pyrographic portraits.

This piece was inspired by the Greta Garbo photography taken by Russell Ball in 1927. Like many people I have a fascination with Greta Garbo and I particularly love the photographs where she has her thrown back to accentuate her perfect "sphinx" profile.



This photo above gives you an idea of what the "pre-burn" is. I generally deal with uncomplicated pieces since I'm an amateur at this medium still.



And the photo above shows you after I've burnt it. I use a Walnut Hollow pyrography pen and I do all of my burnings by hand. I put my initials "A.G." At the bottom of the piece along with the date from when I finished. Next, I'm going to coat it with Minwax Polyacrylic Protective Finish and put felt on the back to further protect the wood and apply a sawtooth hanger to hang it on the wall. And when I'm done with those steps, I'll take pictures and post them! :)

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Writing With Fire: Norma Shearer

The following piece I burnt into wood and painted was inspired by one of my favorite photographs of actress Norma Shearer taken by Alfred Cheney Johnston.

The fusion for this piece was from two things. The first being my adoration for whom I think is one of the most beautiful actresses of classic film, Norma Shearer and my love of collecting old photographs, particularly Alfred Cheney Johnston's photographs of the Ziegfeld Follies girls.



I am not sure if I want to sell it on my Etsy store or not because I've kind of grown attached to it. XD

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Writing With Fire: OOAK Marilyn Monroe Portrait

Ever since I was a teenager, I've been inspired by Marilyn Monroe. I have at least two copies of the Norman Mailer biography, a few other books featuring the photography that was taken of her and I've contributed a few articles about her on my Classic Film Column.

I handcrafted this piece about a week ago. I burnt, painted and sealed everything on this piece. I am extremely proud of it because I drew most of Marilyn's face freehand and I didn't even know I could draw freehand! hehe

I didn't think this piece would turn out so beautifully. And now I'm selling it on Ebay. I hope it goes to a good home and a person who appreciates and loves Marilyn Monroe just as much as I do.


This piece of art is currently on sale on Etsy.com.

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Recap of January 2010 Goals

Is it February already? I'd say that I had a pretty successful month. hehe

On the art/entrepreneurial front, I had a goal of making at least one piece of pyrogaphy to sell on my etsy shop and I ended up with three! I'll be submitting them to my shop by the end of this week. I'm very excited!

On the writing front, I accomplished my goal of writing one short story each week. I ended up submitting one of them to be published on an online sci-fi magazine. *fingers crossed that it gets accepted.*

I also wrote one blog entry every week to this blog with the exception of last week. I initially planned my blog entry to be about my art but the pieces aren't done yet, so keep looking out for that post. It's coming soon!

The only goal which I had to completely change was writing the first draft to either my movie script or to my play. The reason for this being, is that I completely changed the method of writing them. I've decided I'm going to write a fictional narrative (much like a novelization, only only as descriptive as what I can put into their final format of screenplay/play). This way I can flesh out the scenes, perspectives, motivations, dialogue, etc. when my mind is more open to possibilities. Usually, my mind is too scrambled and worried about putting everything into the right format while I'm writing a screenplay or play that I can never see a through-line of everything. I've experimented it with my screenplay and it's worked out so far. I'm hoping that in about two weeks, I'll have a complete fictional narrative to this screenplay which I've been writing for four years. XD

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Writing With Fire

The first idea I had about wanting to do pyrography came from picking up the V-shaped stubs which fall from the palm trees here in Florida. I thought maybe I could recycle them and pyrograph them, hence I bought myself a pyrography kit.

To put it plainly, Pyrography is pen-like tool which you plug into an electrical outlet and when it heats up, you can burn shapes, lettering, portraits, etc into a piece of wood.

But as I quickly learned, these V-shaped stubs start to become brittle with time. You really can't do anything but let them break apart and mingle with the earth.

I was a little bummed out but it was around the holidays when I got the idea that I could make something for each of my friends with this kit. I always try to make at least one thing for each of my friends around the holidays and birthdays.

For my best friend I pyrographed a Celtic Knot symbol for "Friendship" in the top of a small wooden box. Then I painted the box a sea green around the knot and glued some felt into the bottom to provide some cushioning (these photos are provided by my account I have at Deviantart.com):

Celtic Friendship Box: Back by ~ange-etrange on deviantART

That was my "beginner" project.

Then I decided to pyrograph a James Dean Portrait into a wooden plaque for another friend of mine.


James Dean Portrait by ~ange-etrange on deviantART

That was my "intermediate" project.

I also took another wooden plaque and took a "Little Prince" illustration from the book and burned it along with her favorite passage from the book.




I call that gift my "advanced" project.

And I'm finishing up a fourth project for another friend of mine. I will post it as soon as I finish and take pictures of it.

All of the projects took about a month to finish. And I've received a few compliments on my work including the suggestion that I should make and sell some work. I'm making it one of my goals this month to finish a piece which I can sell on Etsy and see how it goes. I took to this craft faster than I ever had with any other craft. In short, I'm obsessed! hehe

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