Encaustic Painting Workshop

I really like to make my own stuff.  I think it's in my genes.  

Back in college I made seriously heavy-duty canvases to paint on with scrap lumber and quarter-round from my dad's basement shop (thanks, Dad!).  When I learned that I could make my own egg tempera paint by mixing diluted egg yolk and powdered pigments I was in heaven. Encaustic painting sounded like another DIY painting media that I really wanted to try, but I wasn't getting to it on my own.  Encaustic painting is basically mixing powdered pigment into melted beeswax and applying that to a rigid surface.  It is an ancient painting technique, actually.  

Back in September I finally had a chance to try encaustic painting.  I was so excited to see the class offered at Pratt Art Center.  Taking that class was an amazing experience.  And doing art full-time four days in a row was awesome!  The following are pictures of what I did.  I'm happy to finally get the pictures taken and on here.

About encaustic painting - The wax is beeswax and damar varnish crystals.  The damar raises the melting point of the wax and makes it harder.  For the most part I applied the melted wax with brushes.  The great set-up at our class for keeping the wax melted but not smoking hot was a sheet of 1/4"+ steel with long bolts at each corner placed over tw0-burner hot plates.  Different colors of wax were in different tins on the metal plate, and adjusting the height of that steel plate would fine-tune the temperature of the wax.  At home I've put my wax in tuna cans in an electric frying pan.  After painting a layer of wax on your surface you have to "fuse" the wax by heating it up with a torch or a heat gun.  I love an excuse to use a torch.  We worked on tables with drywall placed on top - great fire-resistant surface.  The other way to apply color is to use wood-burning tools, but you need a regulator to adjust the temperature down.  I am now the proud owner of a Weller soldering station so I can do just that.  Wahoo - I love tools!

Black sand beach, encaustic/pebbles, 1.5x4"

This is a little tiny piece.  Unfortunately the color on the top is washed out, but it looks like foam at the water's edge or cloudy sky.  This is a handful of pebbles from my favorite beach in the world, which is north of Kalaloch on the Washington coast (see my first blog post for a painting of the beach).

encaustic with knitted copper wire, 4x5"

I just had to try putting copper knitting into wax.  (see my fused glass/knitted wire pieces in an earlier post...)  There is a layer of white wax underneath and enough layers of un-pigmented beeswax on top to bury the wire.

encaustic, 5.5x4"

This was actually my first go at encaustic.  I was experimenting with an image transfer technique, so there is actually tissue paper under the wax - you can see air bubbles trapped under the tissue paper...

Peace (at what cost?), 4x5.5"

This is an image idea that has been stuck in my head for a while...

Skull for Ben, encaustic, 4x5.5"

This image is something that Ben would draw, so I did it for him.  The golden color is shellac.  You can paint shellac on the wax, let it dry and then hit it with the torch flame.  It shrinks up in a cool way...

Salmon, encaustic, 6x12"

This is still not done.  This was my first serious attempt at painting an image in encaustic, and I have worked it and worked it.  I want to lighten up the background.  Right now it has a scraped texture that is driving me nuts. 

Jemima (RIP) , encaustic, 3.5x5"

This was my most satisfying painting.  I became totally mesmerized/entranced/in my zone when doing this piece.  That is the best feeling, and one that I've missed.  I used the woodburning tool for this piece.  You dip the hot tip into blocks of pigmented wax (it's room-temperature, not melted yet) and "paint" that small amout of wax/color onto your surface.

Bones, encaustic/collage, 5x6.75"

This is my favorite piece.  There are a couple of layers of color underneath the black.  I placed the bones on top and covered them with clear wax.  I had to switch to a heat gun to fuse the wax on the bones rather than use a torch because the bones started to burn from the torch flame.  The piece of copper is tacked on top.

 I collect bones on our camping trips down in the Canyonlands/Colorado Plateau area, and I love these tiny rodent bones that I found at the base of a rock wall that was a nesting area for something.  Luckily Ben came upon my stash in an Altoids tin in the glove box of the truck right before my class.  

A New Pancreas for Nick, encaustic/collage, 8.5x11"

Since Nick was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes almost 2 years ago, I have wanted to do some sort of art involving a pancreas.  Especially since the pancreas went from something we had no reason to think about at all to something that dominated our lives.  Here's my first pancreatic art.  I  think it was strangely theraputic for me to become so familiar with what a pancreas looks like.  The painted pancreas in this piece has a 3-D texture that was fun to build up.  There is a copper "bad" pancreas at the bottom left and a shiny new copper leaf one on the bottom right.  

Type-1 diabetes is an auto-immune disease that causes the body to kill the beta-cells of the islets of Langerhans in its pancreas.  These beta cells normally produce insulin, and insulin allows sugars to enter cells and be used as energy.  Type 1 diabetics are "insulin dependant", meaning they have to give themselves insulin shots or be on an insulin pump.  

New Teacher, encaustic/collage, 8.5"x7

This was an experiment using a photo transfer technique.  I made a xerox copy of an old picture that is my grandpa's first class after he became a teacher.  I transfered that image onto tissue paper using acetone.  I fused that tissue paper onto a board with wax under and over it, rubbed india ink on the surface and put some copper foil on the top.