Turn a Photo into a Wood Marquetry Panel

Format

Text

Inputs

reference_photo (image) · Required

Outputs

marquetry_panel_photo (image)

Turn the attached photo into one marquetry picture cut from wood veneer, and photograph that finished panel as a physical object. Vertical 4:5 frame. One image only, no grid and no before and after pair.

THE PANEL
A flat wooden panel resting on a plain workbench top, lit by soft daylight raking across it from one side. The picture covers the whole face of the panel. At least one side of the panel shows as an edge, thin, with the pale layers of its core visible, so the thing reads as an object with a back to it. A soft contact shadow sits under that edge. Nothing else is in the frame.

HOW THE PICTURE IS MADE
Every shape in it is a piece of wood veneer, cut with a knife, fitted against its neighbours, glued down, sanded flat and finished with a matte oil that is not glossy. Nothing is painted and nothing is drawn. A shape's colour is the colour of the wood it was cut from.
Four to six wood species in all: pale maple or birch, honey oak, warm cherry, red brown mahogany, dark walnut, and near black bog oak for the deepest shadows.
Each piece carries its own grain and the grain runs in its own direction. Grain lines stop at the seam where one piece ends and start again at another angle in the next piece. Some pieces are cut so the figure of the wood does the work: a curl of grain for the shoulder of a hill, a tight straight grain for a sky, a wild burl for foliage or for fur.
The seams show as hairline dark lines, and a few of them carry a tiny gap or a slight step where the fit is not perfect. Shallow sanding scratches and faint mill marks catch the light across the surface.

WHAT CARRIES OVER FROM THE PHOTO
Keep the subjects of the photo, their number, their position and their outlines. Nothing new appears in the scene and nothing is taken out of it. A face or an animal keeps its own shape, its own markings and its own expression, built up from pieces rather than drawn. Read the photo for its light and dark areas, then give each area the wood that sits at that brightness.

FAILURE CONDITIONS
1. One or more letters, numbers, signatures, logos, stamps, dates or watermarks anywhere in the frame is a failure. The count has to be zero.
2. Fewer than five separate pieces inside the main subject, each with its grain running at its own angle, is a failure.
3. More than two places where the grain carries straight through a seam at the same angle without changing is a failure. That is a photograph printed onto wood, and this is not one.
4. A smooth airbrushed gradient inside a single piece is a failure. Inside one piece the only variation comes from the wood's own figure and from the light falling across the panel.
5. A colour outside the wood range, meaning blue, green, purple, pink, bright red or grey, covering more than a twentieth of the panel face is a failure.
6. A continuous dark outline drawn or burned around the subject is a failure. An edge exists only where one wood meets another.
7. A different number of people, animals or vehicles than the photo has is a failure.
8. No panel edge visible anywhere in the frame is a failure. Anything in the frame other than the panel and the bench under it is also a failure, so no hands, no tools, no clamps and no second panel.

IF YOU CANNOT DO ALL OF IT
Keep the separate pieces with their own grain directions and the wood only palette first. If the panel edge fights the composition, show it along one side only and let the picture run off the other three.