Baron Samedi, Keeper of Crossroads
One foot in the grave, one foot in the parlor.
Dressed in the finest attire of the underworld, The Baron stands vigil at the threshold of life and death, greeting wandering souls with a tipped hat and a cold smile.
The Inspiration
I have a friend to thank for suggesting, in a late-night conversation, that I should create a piece of Baron Samedi pyrography.
The Baron needs to be portrayed with a nobility and a dignity. He has to be shown as possessing great threat without open menace. And he has to be dressed like a well-to-do gentleman from a bygone era. All of this is absolutely great fun to capture and a challenge to be relished!
The Craft
I decided early on that I wanted to have colour on this burning and made the choice of using coloured pencils to add shading underneath my pyrography. This made the burning process interesting to say the least, with the wire nib melting through the pencil shading before it could ‘bite’ and burn the wood.
The areas of solid black line work around the face and hat posed no challenge. The truly time-consuming part of this burn was attempting to get any variety of shaded colour through the layer of green pencil – it required many, many passes of low heat with a very fine wire loop. The number of passes made keeping crispness of lines in these areas (such as the lapel of the Baron’s waistcoat) exceptionally problematic.
