The Result
A couple of years ago I saw how an engraving was done on the top of the painted piece of wood by one of my friends. Since then I always wanted to try it myself. Finally, about a month ago, my trip to France gave me this opportunity as I decided to make a gift for my friends living in Burgundy.
Their family has been in the wine business for quite a long time and their wines Pouilly-Fuissé and Saint Veran produced in their Domain Du Chalet Pouilly (http://www.chaletpouilly.com) has been among my favorites for years.
First of all, I would like to say that I did not use any of the special wood carving tools that probably should have been used for this project. Instead, I used a widely available crafting knife to perform all of the cutting. I can not say much about the type of the wood suitable for this type of projects - I am not a specialist in this field after all (if someone is, please, feel free to advise). I am even not sure what type of wood I used. I simply found a piece of wood that once had been used as a martial arts target. 
Preparing the Canvas
The piece of wood that was about to serve as a canvas first was cut into an appropriate shape and inspected for the sticking out chips that could easily end up under someone’s skin. Once that step was completed the piece was painted with the black acrylic paint. The choice of the color was completely up to me. Obviously, the black and white classic combination could never look wrong.
Canvas Preparation
To wrap up the preparation it was let to dry.
Preparing the Image
Before the image can appear on the canvas it has to be somehow reflected on the painted surface, for instance, in the form of some guides that may help the cutting. One way to do it, of course, is a simple pencil drawing but transferring an image in this way can require some artistic skills that not everyone possesses. Therefore, plan B comes into play - printing the image on a sheet of paper, attaching it to the canvas surface, and tracing the image with the knife making slight perpendicular to the surface cuts.
Transferring Image onto Canvas
Once done the black surface should read the original image when positioned at an angle to light.
Preparing the image from a photograph could be tricky. A typical photograph contains millions of small features that could seem very important to the whole composition. However, that is not exactly true. By tracing only some lines and shapes of the photograph the reproduced image can appear way more artistic than the original.
The way I went about it - I used GIMP (any graphic editor with layers would work just fine). I put the original photograph in the background and overlay’ed it with a transparent layer where I did all the drawing. I traced only some of the main features on the photograph and that resulted IMHO in a pretty artistic copy. Finally, I added some text and the image was done.
Original Photograph
Drawn Copy
Cutting
Unless special tools are used for cutting, the process is very simple. A first cut is done at an angle to the surface tangentially to the guides on the canvas.
Wood Cutting
The second one is done in a mirror fashion on the opposite side of the guide as shown above.
Intermediate Step 1
Intermediate Step 2
Intermediate Step 3
Wrapping Up
To finish, I coated everything with polyeurathene and attached the hardware.
The Result
