June 2020 Featured Artist – MyArtofGold – Mallory Romportl
My pyrography journey began with the help from my mom and her 20 year old wood burner. When my husband and I got engaged, we wanted personal yet affordable decorations for our wedding and that’s when my mom introduced me to wood burning.
She pulled out her ancient wood burner, showed me how to use it, and I literally waited an hour for it to heat up. Despite how long my first project took me (which was about 8 hours to burn a short quote into a 6 inch wood piece)…I fell in love with the craft! I have been wood burning ever since.
It wasn’t until 6 months after my husband and I got married that I began to seriously pursue pyrography as a business. Before that, I worked as a behavioral therapist for children diagnosed with Autism. That job in itself was the hardest job I had ever done but truthfully rewarding. It put a huge smile on my face when one of my kids would reach a milestone that we had been working on for months at a time.
Although I really loved my job as a behavioral therapist, I wanted to explore the whole new world of art; wood burning in particular. So I expressed all my insecurities about becoming an artist to my husband who then gave me the push I needed to start my journey. He bought me my first Walnut Hollow Versatool and told me to just go for it!
My Art of Gold was established a few weeks later in October 2016, I got my first order in November and then got featured by Etsy a few months later. Fast forward to today when I have almost 300 sales on Etsy, I have gotten to collaborate with incredible artists all around the world, and have worked on some pretty amazing custom orders for my customers.
And I’m so thankful that I just took that leap even though I felt I wasn’t good enough. I found that my style is mostly bright vibrant florals, I just draw a ton of inspiration from flowers which is ironic considering I can’t keep a plant alive no matter how hard I try.
I absolutely love using watercolors to brighten up a piece and have recently been experimenting with resin. I’m still learning a ton of techniques throughout my pyro journey and I enjoy learning new tips and tricks.
The most common questions are how I started lettering and how I create or transfer my designs. The answer to lettering is I started out with brush lettering which I find extremely difficult for some reason. Shout out to all you brush letterers, you are the real deal!
I cannot brush letter to save my life but I found that once I practiced with brush lettering, it was so much easier to work with a wood burning pen. I do free-hand almost all I do by just lightly drawing it onto a wood piece with a pencil but if I do transfer, I use graphite paper and an embossing tool to trace over a design onto a piece.
Thank you to Aney for allowing me to share my story with you all! She is a beautiful and supportive pyro pal and is always willing to assist in any way. I’m so grateful for all the support from other artists, customers, and all others who follow along in my wood burning journey, it means so much to my family and I! I can’t wait to learn more about you so feel free to connect with me on Instagram @myartofgold.
If you would like to check out my art, head over to my shop www.myartofgold.etsy.com
Find Mallory and her Art.
