Another Encaustic

"Leonardo's Horses II"

Encaustic 8x8"

Transfer on warm wax, antique French textile stamps, oil glaze. Fun, fun, fun!

A Little Encaustic

"Little Whimsy"

Encaustic 5x5"

Still have a few finished pieces I from the weekend workshop, and above was a little experiment that I really enjoyed.  Homemade white encaustic paint as the background; the pale scarlet and celadon are R&F encaustic paints. The cad orange is homemade encaustic paint.  Incised lines around the shapes were filled with a black oil glaze which also picked up every little nick in the surface, and I find that I really like the imperfect nature of this piece. A little messy, little bit of whimsy in a little encaustic...  

Playing with Fire II - Last Day of Workshop

This has been such a great workshop - I am at home and crashing after this blogpost...it's amazing how much energy goes into either teaching or attending a painting workshop...Now I am just getting ready to organize my notes with my digital photos.  First the digital camera, later the iPhone with its camera have enhanced art workshops greatly because, as artists, we're visual creatures, and we can take a photo to help with retention of our notes - the camera is just invaluable for workshops I take.

Deliberately setting Art on Fire!

Linda says, "When the art is not working, do something more to the artwork - you may end up with a piece that's better than you ever expected!"  Well, this technique is for all those encaustic pieces that you kept doing something more, and NOTHING worked. This technique "puts the piece back in the game!"  You use shellac and brush it randomly onto parts of the painting and then you really, truly, set it on FIRE.

You do this OUTSIDE on concrete.

I never got around to trying this technique in last spring's workshop  (not because all my pieces were working...) , but I did try it today. I had a piece that really qualified...and it worked!  The shellac creates really wonderful effects and I got all energized and starting painting again...

"On Fire"

Encaustic 10x12"

Shellac, encaustic paint, pressing designs into the hot wax, using one of my French textile stamps from the antique market in Paris, and oil glazing.  I also got some great texture from old kitchen tools that I've picked up at local antique malls.  I could just go on and on and on...what great fun!

Playing With Fire Part II - Encaustic Workshop Day 2

 "Essentials"

Encaustic 12x12"

Another wonderful day at the workshop with Linda Benton McCloskey - this piece incorporated incising, oil glazes and adding items from my "treasure box" of antique mall or found goodies.  R&F Handmade Paints has this great cool opaque green called celadon which is a new favorite of mine, and I really like this quinacridone magenta. the olive green glazes made the piece vibrate for me, and  I love watching the blowtorch "crack" the glaze.  Linda put this piece on FaceBook earlier today but it was turned a different way and later she and I agreed this is the way it should be, and she said that with an abstract, it's better to have the heavier components on top.

Here is Linda demonstrating line, incising, filling in the incision with red encaustic paint on the left, and holding the finished piece on the right - what a great piece for a demo!

Christie Crosby below shows her encaustic jellyfish!

She used caran d'ache crayons and oil pastels to bring out the jellyfish on her abstract background.

Carol Gardner below fill heavy incisions with encaustic paint.

 Then she stamped and oil-glazed. 

On the board - her apron was already painted!

Playing With Fire Part II - Fall Encaustic Workshop

Last April, 5 Charleston artists began an adventure in encaustic painting with a 3 day workshop with encaustic artist and instructor, Linda Benton McCloskey. The 5 of us were "on fire" when we finished that workshop and we couldn't stop talking about it - so it's no surprise that this 3 day encaustic workshop which started today has doubled in size, and the fans have been flamed again!

"Crescendo"

12x12"

It's made a difference that I already know the "language" - I find myself hearing information that Linda taught at the first workshop but I don't remember and obviously didn't absorb.  I believe that we retain the amount of information that we need to begin the adventure and then we're able to hear more at the right time.  Today we played with making encaustic medium, learning to use a blowTORCH correctly, fusing our layers,  mixing our own paint and building texture.  I was more prepared in terms of oil paint this time.  I spent "quality time" (and money) with my friends at Artists and Craftsman Supply in downtown Charleston earlier this week choosing colors of good quality oil paints - the better the oil paint (the less filler in the paint), the better it mixes with the encaustic medium when you make your own encaustic paint.

ChildPlay

12x12"

I had such fun with this painting - it's happy, it's childlike and it speaks FUN and FREEDOM to me.  It came right out of my 5-year old heart!

More FirePower tomorrow!

Encaustic Adventures

RedBurst

8'x10"

Encaustic

From the latest Encaustic Adventures in my backyard...will share more as I go along.  I love working with this medium, and it's so touchable, you just can't help yourself.  I have a show at Edisto Saturday so probably will not get to more encaustic painting until that's over...

The Beginning of My Encaustic Studio

 The Beginning

It took awhile, but I set up my tables today with quick release tin foil and unpacked my electric fry pan. Many thanks to my neighbors Gary and Carol Tatum, Carol for lending Gary and Gary for building everything to attach the tarp over my work tables and water pump which has an electrical outlet.

Proper ventilation is important and my inside studio is long with 2 skylights but only one regular wall window, and Mittens the cat claims that window as hers, so I wasn't ready to fight her and put the fan in the window to blow outside...

Gary made the holes in the ground for the 2x4's deep enough with pvc pipe so I can simply remove the poles and put the pvc cap on.  The tarp is attached to a metal rod that he attached under the eave and I can roll it up. 

Of course, this studio doesn't work well if we have rainy weather, but the weather's gorgeous this weekend and an artist friend is coming tomorrow to paint with me.  But I did cook up the encaustic medium for the first time.  I used 10 parts filtered beeswax to 1 part damar resin, but I think I'll cook some more tomorrow using an 8:1 formula. Poured the medium into a giant teflon cupcake pan.  The smell is glorious!  We'll see what playtime produces tomorrow...

First Medium

Encaustic with Gold Leaf

"Celestial"

23K Gold & Wax Encaustic

Image:  5x7"

Framed: 10x12"

This was painted on a 5x7" Encausticbord panel and I had a gold plein air frame which really brought out the gold. The gold goes on last - otherwise it will lose it's shine; you don't have to use any bole - the gold leaf just adheres beautifully to a warm wax surface.  

It goes to the Gallery with me tomorrow...

Encaustic Icon

Mont St. Michel Madonna and Child

5x7"

Encaustic with Collage

I really enjoyed weaving a spiritual theme into the encaustic medium in this piece.  After I fused the color, I heated the wax surface so it would easily accept the collage elements which included an altered image from a photograph I took of a very old sculpture of the Madonna and Child at Mont St. Michel in France.  This was my last layer and in fusing it, I was careful to scrape away the wax from the image to preserve the clarity.  The use of the sienna earth colors and ultramarine blue color echo the ground of the rocky island on which the Abbey sits (built around 800) and the blue sea which completely surrounds Mont St. Michel at high tide.

More Encaustic Art

"Entrez"

12x12"

Encaustic

One of my finished pieces from the weekend workshop. I built up texture with encaustic paint, used a fabulous stamp on a WARM surface and glazed with oil. Then attached the keyhole I found in my box of treasures...

Playing With Fire - Day 3 Encaustic Workshop

Burnishing the Photo Transfer

Today Linda demonstrated the transfer of a photo image, and these are important points to remember:

• photo image must be transferred to a WARM board
• photo image must be transferred to a SMOOTH board
• the image must be printed on a laser printer, not an inkjet
• use plain copy paper
• if you want writing, make sure you print a "mirror-image" so the words don't look like a foreign language
• press the ink side down into the board of warmed wax
• burnish as above - you can use the backside of a spoon
• then pour water (don't be stingy) over the entire transfer
• rub the paper off with your finger until the transfer is left
• Fuse with a HEAT GUN, not THE TORCH (we're dealing with paper, folks)

Transfer Complete!

Then you get to play some more with whatever techniques you want - even the Torch  - and encaustic paint, line, oil glazes. We especially liked the use of pan pastels over this.

Using Pan Pastels

FINIS

I didn't have a laser copy but I had previously printed some images on my ink jet and these can be collaged.  I printed one of my photos of Mont St. Michel, France in sepia.  Just thinking of that place takes my breath away.  It's an image that's stayed with me ever since I saw a photograph in a book in high school.  

Mont Saint Michel

I'll share some more of my encaustic art in the coming days, and in the next day or so you should be able to see many of the pieces from the workshop artists at the Facebook page for Lowcountry Artists - the gallery that sponsored Linda and this fabulous workshop!

Playing with Fire - Day 2 Encaustic Workshop

Adding Texture to the Encaustic Piece

Today we practiced adding texture - I'm amazed how thick these pieces can become.  Linda also demonstrated various ways to add line - from a Sharpie to a carbon disk to incising to scoring lines with a wooden skewer - the possibilities are endless BUT it is important to incise, score, etc. on a WARM board.  Carving lines into wax to fill with either ink, encaustic color or oil paint is difficult on a cold board.  How do I know this?

Adding Oil Glazes

Glazing any encaustic piece with oil is beautiful, but it really highlights and brings depth to a textured piece.  When you fuse the layer with heat, all kinds of unexpected things can happen when you don't know what you're doing....Linda above knows what she's doing.  I, on the other hand, had some interesting surprises...

Lynne Hardwick, Torch Song

We are all getting used to the blow torches - yesterday we were scared to look at it, today we can't live without it.

First Try - With Line and Texture Added

This is my piece from yesterday - my lines were either scored or incised (which is hard when the wax is cold...) and filled in with either black encaustic paint or india ink.  The I built up the random red  texture and also dry brushed the red encaustic around the edges of the piece.  You can build up the texture about 3 different times before you need to fuse it, and the trick in fusing the texture is to do it lightly so it doesn't flatten out the raised paint.

First Try - With Oil Glaze

I used black oil paint to glaze my "First Try" piece - this is really "hands on" because you put it on your finger and rub it around and into the crevices. (I did use a plastic glove but I still got oil paint all over myself). Then you either spray the piece with Pam oil spray or pour vegetable oil on it and use paper towels to take as much of the oil off as the artist wants.  (You would do well to own stock in paper towels.)

Encaustic is a wonderfully fun and exciting medium to paint in - tomorrow is our last day of the workshop - we are all sad about that but we'll be working to get Linda to return soon!

Playing with Fire - Encaustic Painting 3-day Workshop

Linda Benton McCloskey

and the Propane Blow Torch

How much fun is this!  I'm taking an encaustic workshop with Linda Benton McCloskey and it is absolutely fascinating painting with hot wax paints!  Encaustic painting is one of the oldest methods of painting - the oldest surviving encaustic art is Egyptian Mummy art from the 1st century AD - 2000 years old with colors just as vivid today as when painted!  The beeswax dries clear (and some bees showed up today at the workshop) and the damar resin (tree sap) which the wax is mixed with (and then pigment added) makes it really hard - it even polishes to a high sheen.

I got interested in encaustic painting (I tend to gravitate toward the ancient methods such as buon fresco, medieval manuscript illumination,  and now encaustic) several years ago and purchased some of the basic supplies.  Then I read up on the process and realized that perhaps it would be better to wait for the right time instead of trying to teach myself how to use a blow torch in the studio among other dangerous components to this art.  Well, the right time is now, and a workshop, especially one with as gifted and giving a teacher as Linda, makes all the difference in time and effort spent learning - a good workshop speeds you up a great deal.

My Colors!

I've been saving up Princess Mittens' cat food cans and here they are in all their glory.  The medium (beeswax + damar resin melted together) is that translucent yellow on the far left and you mix the medium with oil paint or pure pigment so you really paint with hot wax that's been colored.  The little can near the top has clear melted paraffin in it and that's what you use to clean your pallet and your brushes.

You take your support and coat it with the hot medium 3 times and after each coat, you fuse it with a heat gun or the BLOW TORCH (learning to use it was worth the workshop...).  Then every time you use paint or embed a treasure (I can't wait to do this), you fuse it and build up these layers of translucent wax and paint, and it's just beautiful - I also love this idea of "sealing" or "encapsulating" paint, objects, paper, etc. under these layers - kind of like "building the mysterious".

First Try

This first try (12x12") already has 6-7 layers (fusing in between each) - don't know where it's going or will end up, but it surely is loads of fun!