Notes From The Net

Ques­tions and Answers About Carv­ing Gath­ered From Pop­u­lar Carv­ing Groups

 Edited by Matt Kelley

Wel­come carv­ing friends to NFTN, ver­sion 2.0.   In this ongo­ing series we will gather the best ques­tions, answers and com­ments from the more active Face­book and mail list carv­ing groups, such as the Wood­carver List, Wood­carv­ing 101 — The Joy of Wood­carv­ing, and the Inter­na­tional Fish Carvers & Painters Asso­ci­a­tion, and present them here.

Enjoy, and Carve On!

Using col­ored pen­cils on carvings

On the Wood­carver List mail group, Jim Williams posed this question:

I want to try using col­ored pen­cils to put sub­tle col­ors on a wood­carv­ing.  Does any­one out there have any expe­ri­ence with this method?  Do I seal the wood first or seal after I use the pen­cils?  If I want a stain for the major­ity of the carv­ing can I apply a light stain and then use col­ored pen­cil for the high­lights and then seal the whole thing with a poly fin­ish?  All infor­ma­tion or sug­ges­tions are welcome.

Joe Dil­lett answered:

Hey Jim,

The answer to your ques­tion is to test on sam­ples. There are three basic types of col­ored pen­cils: wax, oil and water­color. Each will react dif­fer­ently. Most papers has enough tooth to get an even color dis­tri­b­u­tion, how­ever wood is quite dif­fer­ent and dif­fi­cult to get an even coat. Even water­color pen­cil, which absorbs even on paper does not on wood. I have tried sev­eral dif­fer­ent meth­ods of using color pen­cils for adding a lit­tle hint of color but was never sat­is­fied with the results. Maybe some oth­ers here have found a tech­nique to achieve good results?

Pat Sher­man commented:

If you take odor­less paint thin­ner and dip your col­ored pen­cil in it first, you can put the color on wood pretty good.  Oil pas­tel sticks will also work.   Put the color on and then go over it with the paint thin­ner.  Melts it like paint.

Denny Bell added:

I have used col­ored pen­cils and crayon pen­cils for high­light­ing some carv­ings.  The pen­cils were applied to the raw wood and coated with a clear fin­ish with­out prob­lem.  Some carvers use the col­ored pen­cils then soften the color using a wet brush to blend the pen­ciled areas together.

Donna Menke pro­vided this answer:

Jim, I have used oil pen­cils to color wood burn­ings and they worked very well. They are softer than reg­u­lar col­ored pen­cils, although good qual­ity artist-grade col­ored pen­cils are OK.  You want the tooth of the wood to grab the pen­cil color, and bare sanded wood works very well. So I would seal afterwards.

Stain­ing first would pose no prob­lems at all. Just keep it light enough so that the pen­cil will show up.  Fin­ish­ing with poly for oil pen­cil is a prob­lem since the poly will dis­solve and smear the col­ors. I fixed this by seal­ing the design first with the poly and then wait­ing until it was dry before fin­ish­ing the whole thing.

From Gene Brem­mer:

A few years ago, I took a fish paint­ing class out in New Hamp­shire from a fish painter/taxidermist.   He mainly puts out CD’s on fish paint­ing.   One of the ways we painted larger areas of fish is to take a dry water­color pen­cil and lit­er­ally scrub over the side of the fish where we wanted a color.   I do mean we did scrib­ble on the fish repro­duc­tion.   After that we took and wet a reg­u­lar paper towel with water and wrung the water out of the paper towel.   We squeezed it in all dif­fer­ent ways until the towel was only damp.  Then we went to the fish and dabbed over the color we had just scrib­bled on the fish.   It spread the color so very nicely over the fish.  If it takes the color off then you have used too much water.   But, you can put the color right back on and do it over.   Now this would prob­a­bly not work very well in tiny, del­i­cate areas unless using a small brush.    Give it a try and I am sure you will have lots of fun with it.

That’s it for this edi­tion of NFTN.    If you see a post on one of the FB groups or Mail List­servs that you think should be pre­served in NFTN, please use the form below to sub­mit your suggestion.