18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent Pyrography Book to Grow With, February 11, 2007
This review is from: Great Book of Woodburning: Pyrography Techniques, Patterns & Projects for All Skill Levels (Paperback)
"The Great Book of Pyrography" is a wonderful resource for someone starting out in pyrography and hoping to advance. The book covers techniques from most basic to advanced in a clear manner with tons of illustrations and photos.
I especially appreciated the explanation of both using a more basic single temperature tool (inexpensive and the one most beginners would be using) and the more advanced multi-temp tool.
By following the chapters in the book from beginning to end, especially utilizing the practice board (using 1x1 squares on a larger board to test various techniques) the reader can quickly learn and improve their skill level.
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14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
repetitive and incomplete, October 30, 2007
This review is from: Great Book of Woodburning: Pyrography Techniques, Patterns & Projects for All Skill Levels (Paperback)
This book contains the work, mostly in one style, of one artist, mostly on one surface (birch plywood), using (apparently) two brands of burners. The author has a great understanding of how to coax a good range of light-to-dark from the variable heat nibs, but I found her use of texture to be lacking, whenever a smooth or gloss effect was appropriate. Her practice board includes a remarkable 81 stroke and stipple variations, but nothing there will help the pyrographer depict anything that glows or shines or relects. So the leather boots look like suede, the old car looks covered in fur, the eyes of her angry, sullen 'green men' and wildlife look dead, and the pond looks like a board. There are dozens of nibs, but this author uses just two in most of the work in this book, and most of the time we have to guess which of the two is being used in the projects.
If you want textures that shine (or whatever else you want them to do), check out
Pyrography Workbook: A Complete Guide to the Art of Woodburning by Sue Walters. It has much less tedious repetition between text, captions, and exercises, and it covers a much greater variety of technique, including a whole chapter (rather than a paragraph) on the three basic pen tips, skew, writer, and shader, with a nib chart that briefly explains many more. Still, there is just one artist's work in what is boldly titled a 'complete' guide, but I do think Walters gets far closer to a complete guide than Irish.
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great book to get you started in pyrography, April 7, 2007
This review is from: Great Book of Woodburning: Pyrography Techniques, Patterns & Projects for All Skill Levels (Paperback)
This book has it all. Different techniques, how to create tone values, the options available in different woodburning kits, easy to understand and a world of information. I can't say enough about it.
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