Encaustic Painting Workshop continued - Day 2 = Sa-weet success!

The second day of this Encaustic Miniatures class rocked.  Everyone got down to business and created some amazing work.  

First, I finished my anemone - 

It is about 2.25"x2.25" on a thin piece of steel.

Next was a salmon, specifically a coho in its spawning colors - 

The painting is on a thin piece of steel, too, and it's about 3.5"x3".  The background/water is actually the watercolor underpainting on the surface of the steel and then coated with clear wax.  I didn't want to mess with it.  The salmon was over-painted on the clear wax coat by applying pigmented wax with a wood-burning tool.  This piece is in a box that is a signature thing for our instructor Larry Calkins.  He has a bunch of little, whimsical miniature encaustics that are glued into shallow boxes with lids.  He finishes the surfaces of his boxes by slathering them with a thick coat of Tite-bond wood glue and burning it with a torch!  It makes the coolest, kind of gross,  surface.  The process is like burning a marshmallow, the way the surface of the glue bubbles up and scorches.  So Larry had us all make boxes for our work, too, if we wanted.  I'd like to find some tiny hinges and attach the lid on this box to open to the side.

So,

the cool boxes got me thinking in a new direction.  Anyone who knows about my goofing around with slumping insulin bottles in the kiln is not going to be surprised that I took a couple slumped bottles along with me to the class, just in case...  And I really loved the look of the shiny, smooth bottle in this slightly wicked looking, texture-covered box.  I just happened to paint a tiny little pancreas on the front of the insulin bottle in this one -  

This little beauty is about 3.5"x3.75".

I was thinking about painting an ominous skull on the back side of that bottle to loom through behind the pancreas, but I decided it probably wouldn't be visible/obvious enough.  So I decided to do the skull on my second slumped bottle instead. 

For the skull bottle I was going to prepare another box with the funky burned-glue texture, but then I watched another woman in the class darkening her box by scorching it a bit with the torch before doing the glue slathering and burning.  I just decided to take that a little farther and thoroughly burned my third box.  Yep, art aided by fire.  I worked outside, don't worry!  Then I coated the burned box with clear beeswax and melted it in with a heat gun.  I was SO excited, and here it is - 

This guy is about 3.25"x4.25"

And the most exciting part is that instructor and the studio manager want these two bottle pieces in an upcoming show!!  WAHOO!

And finally, a piece to finish at home, since the class ended before I could finish it - 

I've always loved this blue sky with a fluffy cloud image.  

I saw a show once where a whole wall was covered with dozens of paintings that the artist did recording the sky conditions once a day for many days.  I think it was his warm-up exercise before painting every day.  They were probably all less that 12" square.  It was the coolest thing.