In this tutorial I’m going to explain how to create a simple icicle. Some of you might think this looks a bit intimidating, but it’s actually a beginner friendly project. The background is probably the hardest part of this artwork. It was also the most time-consuming part. Whereas the icicle was pretty quick and fairly easy to do.
Click on the image to the left to watch a YouTube video version of the tutorial.
I do want to mention that Todd thought my icicle didn’t look very icicle like because it was by itself. This image has been photoshopped to add more icicles. It is the same icicle I present in this tutorial, but I only show the lower portion of it. Plus, with the one on the right, I made it a bit wider. You can easily add more icicles to your artwork.
Now, let’s get started.
SKILL LEVEL: 1
MATERIALS NEEDED:
- Writing tip
- Shading tip
- 4 x 6 inch (10.2 x 15.2 cm) piece of wood
- Icicle pattern: Icicle pattern
- White colored pencil (optional)
Here’s the reference photo I’m using for this artwork.
STEP 1 – PREP THE WOOD
Wood burning is much easier if you take the time to prepare the wood surface. Always smooth the wood surface by sanding it with at least 220 grit sandpaper.
Then thoroughly wet the board by misting it with water or running it quickly under the sink faucet.
The board should be damp to the touch, but not soaking wet.
Let the board dry and then sand again.
This piece of plywood board is broken up into three sections. The far-left section is how the board looks without any prep work. The board has a rough texture. The middle section of the board shows how it looks after it was sanded, and the surface is a lot smoother. The right section of the board shows it after it was lightly misted with water and allowed to dry. Notice how rough the board looks, but a quick sanding will remove that and leave an ultra-smooth board.
Doing the 4-step process (sand, mist, dry, sand) produces a super smooth surface, and the smoother the surface is the better the burn results will be.
STEP 2 – TRANSFER & TRACE LINES
Transfer the pattern to the board. I print out the pattern on regular copier paper.
I coat the back of the paper with dark graphite. Before removing the pattern, always look for missing trace lines.
I’m adding a border frame to my board.
The reference photo shows the icicle hanging from a slanted roof. Or more accurately, the photo was taken at an angle. I decided to make the icicle hang from the edge of the boarder frame.
Here’s how the board looks at this point.
Use a writer pen tip and lightly burn in the traced lines. Use a light hand pressure as you burn. This will help keep the pen tip from sinking into the wood surface.
After the trace lines are burned in, then rub over the area with a pencil eraser to remove excess graphite.
STEP 3 – BACKGROUND
If you examine the background on the reference photo, you can see it is filled with some out-of-focus evergreen trees. I’m going to simplify things and create a dark mottled background. It is up to you if you want to mimic what I’m going to do or replicate the photo.
Use a shader of your choice and burn circular motion on the background.
Make sure to rotate the board as needed to keep your pen tip in optimal position when next to the icicle. This means that the front edge of the pen tip is next to the icicle. The body of the shader is angled of the background. This will help ensure that the edges of the icicle are crisp clean.
I’m using Colwood’s E shader.
I chose this particular shader because the pointed tip always me to work next to the icicle with precision. The large body of the shader allows me to get the background done quicker.
I’m working my way around the icicle, rotating the board as needed. The goal is to create a very wide band of irregular color around the icicle. If you look closely as the burning I’ve done, it looks like a bunch of small roundish shapes that differ in colors grouped together around the icicle. Those roundish shapes come from the circular motion burn stroke I’m using.
As I said, circular motion is the burn stroke I’m using on the background.
Circular motion just means that I’m burning a continuous chain of loops. Some of the chains are long, and some very short. With the longer chains, I it allow it to meander about, and vary in color. All of this creates an irregular texture.
Another thing I do is change the angle that I hold the handset, so that I get different sizes of circular motion. The steeper the angle the smaller the circular motion.
In this photo I’m using the flat of the shader, so the entire nib is in contact with the board. Since this pen tip is so large, it produces a wide burn stroke.
Also, because so much metal in is contact with the board, the nib doesn’t stay as hot as it would if I was using just the pointed tip. This results in a lighter colored burn result.
Sometimes I burn a meandering chain of circular motion using the tip of the nib, so I get a dark burn result. Then I decrease the angle of the tip, and fill in adjacent area with lighter color.
I also do the opposite. I fill an area with color using the flat of the shader. Then I re-burn using the tip, to create a dark chain of circular motion. That is what I’m doing in this photo. I started the chain to the right of the icicle, and I extended the color to the left side.
Keep in mind that there isn’t a set way to create the background.
You may hate what I’ve done. Maybe you’d prefer gradient shading, or creating the out-of-focus trees shown in the reference photo. It’s your artwork, so customized it to your preferences!
Because I have a border frame around my artwork, I have to be careful when burning near the edges of it. The reason is that I want the frame to be lighter in color than the background.
Here’s a progress photo.
Notice how the color varies, but isn’t extreme. There are some really dark areas, but I didn’t include really pale spots.
Does my background look anything like the background in the reference photo? No. That’s not concerning to me. The purpose of the background is to provide dark contrast so that the icicle stands out. No one is going to pay that much attention to the background; especially if you have more than one icicle.
I’m almost done. The darker the background is, the paler the icicle will look. You could burn the background to a uniform dark color.
I personally find it monotonous as hell creating a large uniformly color background. For some reason it is more entertaining or enjoyable to burn circular motion. That said, I have to remind you to do what pleases you!
Here’s how my artwork looks so far. The icicle really stands out.
I ended up darkening up the frame a bit more to even out the color. Truth be told, I preferred it being lighter in color, but was too lazy to lighten it back up.
STEP 4 – ICICLE
If you look closely at the icicle, you can see that it doesn’t have a lot of tonal variety. There are essentially 4 hues we need: white, dark, medium, tan.
White is the color of unburned wood. This is as pale as you can make things without adding a white coloring medium.
Dark will be a very dark brown color.
Medium will be 3-4 shades lighter in value than the dark.
Tan will be 2-3 shades darker than white.
Also, most of the edges are white. To ensure that the icicle stands out from the background, I will be making all of the outer edges white on my artwork.
Ignore the burning I’ve done so far on the icicle. The first thing that needs to be done is to remove any overburn along the edges.
I didn’t notice the overburn until I got this far on the icicle. To remove the overburn, use the edge of a sharp object to gently scrape away the color.
Overburn happens when you burn at a high heat and the heat from the pen tip chars the wood adjacent to where you are burning. Basically, it darkens areas on the wood that you don’t want darkened.
Another way overburn happens is from the smoke generated when burning on high heat. I use an easel as I work, so the board is angled towards me. Because of this the smoke drifts upward and can discolor the wood. Most likely the overburn on my board happened when I had the board angled and was burning adjacent to the edges of the icicle. Fortunately, smoke induced overburn is pretty easy to remove.
Adjust your burner to get the medium color defined at the beginning of this section. Test your pen tip on scrape until the desired color is achieved. Once the proper color is achieved, start filling in the darker areas on the icicle.
When I use a reference photo, I like to keep it close by. I recommend you do the same thing.
I am using either circular motion or a jagged almost zigzag style of burn stroke.
The circular motion is an open circular motion. This means you can see the wood behind the loops of circles in the burn stroke.
My jagged or zigzag-ish burn stroke means I’m burning lines in an up and down direction. Sometimes I angle the burn strokes in different directions.
The goal is to fill the area with irregular color. Notice that there are numerous little spots where the color is very pale. Those pale spots occurred because I didn’t burn over the spot.
Right now we are creating the base layer of color on the darker areas of the icicle.
As you work down the icicle, the patches of darker color gets narrow. Reduce the size of your burn strokes accordingly.
Here is a progress photo.
Adjust your burner to produce the dark burn color. Make sure to test out the color on scrape wood.
Now re-burn over the dark areas.
Use the same type of burn stroke(s), but don’t completely cover up all of the medium-colored burn strokes. We want the darker areas on the icicle to have tonal variety.
Continued work.
Work your way down the length of the icicle. First fill in the darker areas with the medium color. Then re-burn over a few spots here and there with the dark color.
I did not mimic the reference photo exactly. Instead, I’ve created something that resembles the reference photo.
One main difference is that I left all of the outer edges of my icicle white in color.
Here’s another progress photo.
Turn the heat down on your burner until you are getting a tan colored burn result. Make sure to test the burn results on scrap.
Then start burning over some of the white areas on the icicle.
Use the same type of burn strokes that were used when burning in the dark areas.
The goal is to give the white parts of the icicle a little color and texture.
Don’t fill the entire space with color. Leave some areas completely unburned. The unburned areas will become the bright white highlights seen in the reference photo. Again, I didn’t try to replicate the photo. I just randomly added a little color here and there.
How much tan color you add to your icicle is up to you. I probably added too much, but I think it still turned out decently.
Continued work.
Do any fine tuning you feel is needed.
I thought that the color on the narrow darker areas wasn’t dark enough, so I darkened up a few places here and there.
Here’s is how my icicle currently looks. I don’t like the tip of it. I added too much color.
I’m using a knife to gently scrape away the burn marks.
While I was scraping, I also touched up some of the edges on the icicle.
Here’s a comparison photo showing before and after.
STEP 5 – HIGHLIGHTS
This is a completely optional step that requires the use of a white colored pencil. I’m using a Prismacolor brand of colored pencil.
I will mention that you can add some highlights, and if you don’t like them, then erase them. Just do this right away. The longer the colored pencil is on the board, the more it bonds with the wood and becomes harder to remove all traces of it.
Draw in some highlights here and there on the white or tan portions of the icicle.
I do not recommend adding colored pencil highlights over the darker areas on the icicle.
You can add as many or as few highlights as you like.
I concentrated most of the color near the top of the icicle since that seemed to be the palest area on the reference photo. I also colored over the bottom edge of the tip on the icicle.
Here is how my icicle looks. Some of my highlights are a touch too bright for my liking.
To fix that, I use a kneadable eraser to gently rub over the highlights. Kneadable erasers aren’t as aggressive or abrasive as most pencil erasers, so only a little bit of color is removed.
If you are not familiar with or do not own a kneadable eraser, here’s an affiliate link to Amazon to a set of them. https://amzn.to/39Z64qM
If you need a more aggressive eraser, I would recommend using the Vanish brand. It is more aggressive than a standard pink eraser, but not as aggressive as a sand eraser. Sand erasers are also called ink pen erasers.
Here’s an affiliate link to Amazon to a set of them. https://amzn.to/39Z64qM
Here’s how my icicle looked once I was done.
IN CONCLUSION
This is it for this tutorial. I hope the information was presented in a straight-forward easy to follow manner. More importantly, I hope you will try to create an icicle.
Once you understand the how to create one, it would be easy to add them to other artwork. They would add the feeling of cold to winter scenes. For example, add an icicle or two at the end of a snowy branch.
Thank you for reading. Until the next blog,
Brenda
Feb 27, 2024
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