In the spring of 2011 Vira Manko sent me a copy of the new book she had edited: “I Will Paint the Voice of the Wind: The Pysanky of Iryna Vakh.”  The eggs inside were numerous, lovely and varied, and included several pages of strangely colored pysanky.  They were unlike anything I had seen before.

I quickly sorted out that they had been written on multi-colored eggs and then dyed a final, darker color.  The technique reminded me of drawings we had done as children, creating pictures by a form of sgraffito (scratching away a dark outer color to reach a lighter color).  I made a bunch of eggs with this technique, refining my designs as I went, and called this new technique “faux (false) sgraffito,” as no scratching was involved.

You can see the chicken egg pysanky I created with this technique, and more information about the technique, here.

  Sunflower Goose Egg Pysanky        Etched Goose Egg Pysanky