I have been involved in making up pictures from either birch plywood or pine wood. The birch ply pictures are cut out using a scroll saw, then backed with a piece of blackened ply to give the finished effect. The plywood pictures are mostly of famous people i.e. John Wayne, Elvis Presley, Marilyn Munroe, James Dean, mostly American Stars.
The pictures made from pine wood are cut out like a jigsaw then sanded to round off the edges. They are then stained different colours and the parts are glued back together either raising or lowering the piece to give a 3D effect. When everything is dry, the item is then mounted on a wood background and given several coats of satin varnish.
Most breeds of dogs, cats and horses can be done from pictures. The patterns all come from America. Every picture made in pine wood is different owing to the grain of the wood.
Scroll saw segmentation portraiture is a new and exciting technique that involves a combination of fundamental scroll sawing and wood stain procedures. The process enables any scroll saw artist capable of following a line to create realistic looking three dimensional wooden portraits of objects, wildlife, and even likenesses of real people. Like a beautiful oil painting, a scroll sawn segmentation portrait in wood looks even more realistic when viewed at some distance.
Up close details may not make much sense, like the brushwork on the canvas of fine art painting may look visually disconnected.
However, when you step back a bit, all the colours, tones, textures and shadows emerge as a wonderful, coherent image. By and large the more pieces and the greater detail involved, the closer to photographic realism the whole becomes.
Please contact me if you have any queries - I also offer classes in scroll art.