First Wood burning project, a Peony on mystery wood

When I first tried wood burning I remember getting my pen for Christmas as a young kid, probably between the ages of 10-12(I'm 31 now for reference). It came with these horrible pre-printed pieces of wood with crazy grain lines and I remember the roughness of the edges so very clearly. The pen...Oh the pen...It was red with a black grip. It took a millennia to heat up and when it finally got to a temperature that would work well with the evil wood panels, it got too hot to comfortably hold just as you were a few minutes into the project. We also didn't have very good internet at that time (we lived outside the metro area) and inspiration was hard to find, so sadly I gave up on my little wood burner and frankly am not sure what happened to it.

Fast forward to today when everything is about the latest technology I look for things that I don't have to plug in to for entertainment and am revisiting a lot of the art mediums that I learned as a youngster but never mastered. Browsing the addicting aisles of Michael's I came across the Walnut Hollow Versa-Tool and thought about my first experience. The memory was surprisingly fond and I decided that I wanted to have the burner. My sister actually gifted me one for Christmas and I was surprisingly excited to open it even though I had asked for it specifically. I took to YouTube and watched a ton of pyrography videos, but didn't start using my new toy right away.

But last night I said that's enough waiting and pulled it out to start this WIP. It's not my drawing, just a google image that I found when searching peony drawings. The wood is a mystery, I bought it for $3 at Dollarama and it has a weird fill/glue mark on it but I figured "whatever, it's my first project" and went to town.

It was so, pleasant, to actually sit down and concentrate on. I suppose the feeling would be similar to when using an adult coloring book. The smell was very nice as well, almost like a tiny campfire smell as you worked. It's no where near perfect, as you can see by the wide scorch marks but I am pretty pleased with it. I plan to add some more fine details to the petals.

I am also thinking of adding color using watercolors (GASP...another art medium, and one I haven't used at that). I have seen a few pieces on Instagram using paint to accentuate the colors and I thought they were really beautiful.

I'll be posting the image again once I figure out how to actually USE watercolors haha.

Also, if this is something I will spend more time on I can absolutely see myself buying a fancier burning system. The Versa-Tool has a temperature control, which is great, but it's like 10 inches from the pen so it's knocking you on the arm while you're trying to make a smooth controlled line. Not a very good design, but it's not really a high end model. The Razor tip system looks sexyyyy, as sexy as a wood burner can be anyways. Yes, I am aware that I started this post off about less technology and plugging in...but the end goal would be the finished piece, please don't judge me.

Horror Llama