I am John Murray, Afrikaans speaking and born in Vereeniging, Gauteng, South Africa in 1976. I grew up in the North West Province and currently live in a small Coastal Village in the Western Cape, where I have resided for the last 10 years.
As a child I came to realization that I had a gift for drawing and during my school days I received requests from the teachers and fellow classmates to produce drawings for them.
I particularly enjoyed creative pencil sketches and even then as a child I burnt my sketches into sawn off wooden logs with a small soldering iron that I received as a birthday gift.
(Pyrographic, Pyrotechnique, Pyrograph or called Poker work)
In Latin the word Pyro means fire and the word graphic denotes engraving (art created with fire) to burn on wood or leather with a heated object. This originated in our country with the bushmen who used the method to decorate their bows and leather clothing.
In my case, I use a 25 watt soldering iron with one point and one temperature. I do not change my point in order to do finer work etc.
