Creative Woodworks & crafts 2005-04, страница 50

Orchid Davis ■ woodburning for Color

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by Orchid Davis and Wes

Wes' Introduction

When someone mentions woodburning, my first recollection is thai of Hoy Scout camp, where we were 1 lauded a tool that looked like a soldering iron. It was cumbersome, hot to hold, and generated untold amounts of charcoal that by a real, stretch of ihe imagination might resemble ail animal sacrificed as a burnt offering. Then wc met Orchid Davis at a carving show and were completely blown away by her pyrography and finishing touches.

She and her husband John operate a woodcarving supply business out of their home in South Carolina, and spend the winter ill Florida setting up at carving shows. Between shows, they bolh teach around tlie country—John, woodcarving and Orchid, w<x>dburning. She is a graphic artist by trade, and an accomplished bird carver by avocation, but it was her exposure to woodburning (used to enhance her birds) that put her on her present path. She has written two books, How to Woodburn Wildlife and Woodburning Western Wildlife, plus she has been working on a third one for the last two years now, but swears that it wilt be finished SOON. Her love of wildlife is obvious, and it is actually a Red Shouldered Hawk at her Florida residence that brought ns together. She wanted a photograph of her with the hawk nearby, and I got a lucky shot. It seems that the hawk has been around her house for 4 years, nesting nearby, and has pretty much adopted her.

She explains her woodburning this way: "I am just a lazy bird carver who decided to let someone else have the noise and dust while 1 do the fun part - burning and painting." It is not that woodburning is something new, because it is not; it is just that her technique of burning tor color sets her work apart from most others, arid then there is the way she adds the finishing touches that brings her designs to life.

SD • Creative Wocdivorks R Drafts Apr il 2DD5