I’m sure I’ve talked about this before, but my second daughter just loves to doodle. When she was in high school, she’d take a pen or marker and just start making these intricate designs that remind me on henna painting on whatever was available. Paper, her arm, her jeans, other people’s arms, books… It seems just about anything that would stay stationary long enough to be doodled on was fair game. At the time, we didn’t see it as a good thing, but now, I have to admit I’m pretty impressed that she can just make these kinds of designs, seemingly without effort.

As I was looking back at some old photos on my turning club’s website, I came across the wig stand that she did to support the club and donate to the Susan G. Komen foundation. Here’s a picture of what I’m talking about:

When that was made, I’d always wondered if a design like that would transfer to a bowl, but then life got in the way and that fleeting thought disappeared.

During the pandemic lockdowns, I had spent some time turning up wood that had been sitting around for awhile. One piece was from this really, really nasty ash tree. It had been killed by the ash beetles, left standing for (apparently) years, had prior damage done to the trunk before dying, and was all around unusable. I took my best guess at where the bad spots would be and started cutting blanks. Sometimes, all I got for my efforts was more firewood for the hot dog roasts, but there were a few blanks that slipped through. I turned one of them, but was immediately struck by just how plain the grain was. All that work, and nothing of any interest to show for it.

Then that old thought leapt out of the depths and I thought “I’ll get my daughter to doodle it up!” Since she was an “essential worker”, she didn’t have nearly as much down time as I had, so the project sat for awhile. The she finished, but I forgot again to pick it up and it sat for even more time. This month, nearly a year later, I got the bowl back and decided to wood burn her design into the bowl and see how it looked. MUCH better than when I took it off the lathe!

Burning in her design wasn’t that hard, but when I was done, it needed more. I decided to do a heavy texture over all the background, which improved the look dramatically! The more I looked at it, though, the more I realized that when burning the texture in, there was still speckles of the lighter, whiter, wood that showed through. To get rid of the splotchiness, I painted all of the texture with black india ink, which solved the problem. Looking at the design more, there were areas of blank space that didn’t stand out, until it was put on a black background. With my daughter’s permission, I added some designs to fill in the open spaces, and this became the final project. Matte finish was added to protect the wood without making it shiney, which actually makes the black blacker somehow.

Pretty proud of this collaboration! I love having creative children!

Here are some pics of the progress, along with some shots of the final result:

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