Sonic - Solar Wood Burning Art

Wood burning is the process of using a heated tool to burn designs onto wood. It is a subset of pyrography.

It generally represents the use of a heated tool (such as a pyrography tool) to create art on wooden items.

This type of art is focused on craftsmanship, and can be perceived as something more artistic and craft-oriented.

Common pyrography tools use energy to heat a metal tip. These tools usually need to be connected to a stable power source to generate enough heat.

What if a similar result could be achieved without relying on local power grids? Let's find out.

Magnifying glass

Pencil

Sharpie marker

Clean piece of wood or one of your choice

Grease Marking Pencil White

A piece of wood of your choice (preferably smooth and clean)

Safety Elements

Before starting this process, I recommend using polarized sunglasses with UV protection. UV-protective lenses block the sun's harmful ultraviolet rays to protect your long-term eye health.

Also, since this project takes place outdoors, I recommend wearing a wide-brimmed hat, a long-sleeved shirt, and if is getting very hot, always sunscreen (Use an SPF of 30 or higher) to protect your skin from the sun.

Remember, your health comes first.

As you know, I love to draw, so for this project I wanted to combine illustration with pyrography. Of course, this has been done before, so I'll share some interesting tips and techniques for creating a pyrography piece without using electricity, exploring how a magnifying glass works in the blazing sun.

Let's get started!

You can choose any image you prefer. In my case, I chose a picture of Sonic because he's one of my favorite characters, and since I wanted to make a picture worthy of hanging in my room, I opted for something I liked.

I've always really liked the design of classic Sonic, so I'll use Naoto Ohshima's design.

I'll use this image to transfer it to the wood later.

Now that we have the piece of wood and our reference image, we'll need our tool of immense power, our off-the-grid laser beam, yes, a magnifying glass.

Light behaves differently when we use a magnifying glass on a surface, but light affects colors in different ways.

But how does it work?

Light absorption: A black object retains almost all radiation and converts it into heat. The magnifying glass concentrates the sun's rays onto a very small point, adding a lot of energy to that exact spot. When the magnifying glass's power combines with the high absorption of black, the temperature rises instantly and the material burns.

The case of light colors: White or light colors reflect light instead of absorbing it. Since the energy bounces off or passes through the object, it barely heats up and it's very difficult for it to burn.

In this step I'll give you a color guide to print out and experiment with how light interacts with each color.

Use a smooth, clean piece of wood for practice before moving on to the final piece. It's best to do several tests to understand how the magnifying glass works, how to hold it, and how to control it.

Upon discovering that black is the color that retains almost all of the sun's radiation and converts it into heat on the wood, I found that it also tends to overflow, damaging the strokes, so I counteracted it with white.

I also tried using a pencil to see if the burns would be milder, but in the end, the projection onto the magnifying glass doesn't burn the graphite very well. Perhaps charcoal might work, but for now I've opted to use a black Sharpie for the black lines and a white grease pencil for the white lines or fills.

For the final example, I'll explain using the projection of an eye. Here, I first painted the white part and then outlined it. Why? So that when I go over it with the black marker, it will be applied over the white color.

Outline the exterior with white as well to prevent heat ray spills

And now let's move on to the concentrated heat beam to "pyrograph" with the magnifying glass what was previously traced in black.

Don't stay too still in one place, make firm but quick movements and if necessary go over the edges again, but after each heat pass touch up the outer areas with white to obtain finer results and edges.

After completely finishing the tracing, carefully remove the white color with a damp cloth. You will obtain a quality tracing depending on your handling of the magnifying glass. Make all the necessary attempts and tests before moving on to the final piece, to correctly understand how this process works.

Although I have some drawing skills, perhaps you don't, so I'll explain the process I used to transfer the image to the wood.

Yes, I did draw something, but I wanted the drawing to be identical to the original character.

So, the first thing is to take a sheet of paper and trace the drawing in the opposite direction to how we want it to look.

Then, tape the paper to the wooden board and, using a pencil or embossing tool, I trace over the lines. This will give us a smooth transfer to the wood. Then we'll have to redraw it again to adjust the details.

Now fill in the spaces in all the zones where you don't want the magnifying glass to cause burns, applying plenty of white as in the final example.

Now let's start with Sonic. Try to be quick once you've mastered the magnifying glass to avoid over-burning. Although the white color protects some edges, if you stay too long the heat will overflow, burning more wood than desired.

Take your time, but remember that the best hours for working are from 10:00 to 14:00.

After this time, sunlight becomes more difficult to project onto the wood through the magnifying glass due to the angle of the sun's projection, and this will make the magnifying glass difficult to use.

So you'll only have 4 hours of stable working time.

Try to replicate each line as accurately as possible to avoid overflows or unwanted lines, and achieve a flawless result.

After several hours of tracing with a magnifying glass and perhaps a little sweat, you will obtain a pyrographic illustration of your favorite image, without the need for tools that depend on local power or conventional electricity.

What do you recommend? Should I leave it as is, or add something else to the design, maybe their logo, a background? Or should I finish it with the retro design of the original image? Let me know in the comments.

Thank you for viewing my project.