I went to the rancho with the family and there was a good amount of down time, so I started sketching. I’d been admiring the wrought iron work that serve as bars for a lot of windows in Mexico.
A lot prettier than plain iron bars, so I decided to sketch them. At first I copied the different patterns that I saw, but I started to experiment with the same basic shapes and curves all the designs are composed of, but I switched them up from the basic patterns.
Here are the first few sketches I did while at the ranch:
Here are my own variations inspired by the originals:
I liked what I’d come up with, so I decided to take the idea bit further and work with color on a larger piece of paper.
For this image I used brown and red stabilo markers only:
For the blue version of the following pattern, I liked the blue and green, but the lighter stabilo marker that I used for some of the fine lines tends to get lost. I decided to do another version. For the second version of this pattern I used black for all the fine lines and tried out a few different colors. I used both stabilo and Prisma Color markers:
With the last version, I was satisfied with the overall result and considered this pattern done, at least in sketch book form.
Here’s the sketch of the original pattern I’m using:
I settled on the shade of white I like–3 coats of the “white wash” I made, but you can still clearly see the wood grain since the white is not opaque. It’s a bit difficult to see the difference in this photo, but I chose the color of the block on the right, which was the lightest version of the 3 test blocks:
I tested out wood burning to create the lines of the pattern. I like the result, but when I first started I wasn’t sure if it was going to work. It took a long time for the wood burner to heat up all the way. I tried to make my first mark with the wood burner after it was plugged in for just a minute or so. It barely made a dent. I gave it another 10 minutes before I tried it again. The results were better, but not great. It seemed that the sharp metal tip was gouging into the soft wood without much actual burning. I fiddled with it for a while, going over the same lines several times and drawing with it very slowly, hoping that I just needed to get the hang of it. After maybe another 10 minutes, the metal tip was finally fully heated and was making nice smooth dark lines. I still had to practice and get the feel of it, but a wood burner definitely works best when it’s fully hot.
Here’s a photo of me waiting for the wood burner to heat up:
I tried out some oil pastels between the wood burned lines. While I like the effect, I’m not sure I love color for this project. Instead, I’m going to keep the color palette neutral. I have a few ideas to try tomorrow involving browns grays and black. Here are the test blocks I did:
**notice the wood burned lines!
Since I settled on the background color and wood burning, the next step was to paint all the blocks and then transfer the pattern.
This image gives you an idea about how I got the pattern on the wood blocks using graphite transfer paper:
Here’s a photo of the whole pattern transferred onto the blocks:
Tomorrow I’ll be burning in all the lines, and hopefully settling on an idea for how to color the positive space.
