Encaustic Painting Techniques
Everything we have talked about could fall under this encaustic painting techniques title, but
lets look a little further. It wasn't long after I started encaustics that I
wondered what would happen if I took a JPEG image to the local print shop and had it put on glossy stock so I could wax over the digital image. This turned out to be quite a success. The sale of those pieces encouraged me to expand this encaustic painting techniques further. I had to get a new digital camera and soon it paid for itself. I also had another brain storm to use the CD gem cases as frames for small paintings. The next step was to print on the CD surface. I made a collection of art cards with
those CD cases putting different greetings on the CDs printed with my new inkjet
printer. I liked to take photos of statues, and waxing over their faces turned out especially nice. I first started with a piece that was hanging on the wall in my garden. I found this face a great piece to wax over. I called it "Man Of The Forest" as it was a Green Man's face from England. I showed this at my art group and won first prize for our monthly showing together. Always fun to get recognized. I took the picture of the Buddha's face from a statue that was in a local store.
Eventually you are going to want to paint larger which is a little more challenging. You basically run out of wax and have to reload and
make it look like there is no break in the design or image. But with
practice you will eventually learn this technique..
This is quite a large painting called "Cloud Mountain" that was
done on a pearl gloss poster board size piece of card stock. I spotted that
poster board product in a store and had to try it out. You will want to experiment on
all sorts of surfaces.
Here is one done on a mirror surface called "Crystal Fountain" that is only 12 x 12 inch image size
This one is done on a large mirror,
probably 36 x 26 inches, called Nebula. The glass surface is cold so it is not a
friendly surface to work on.
Creative Collage Techniques Our gallery just had a group show called "Celebrating The Human Form" so I was going to try my hand at coming up with a life drawing. I attended some life drawing classes to see how I would do and it was a lot of work for me, but I was encouraged and I am going to explore this further. As I was running out of time to get a piece ready for the show I decided to use photographs of the two models I had worked with. The first project was to take the female pose which was a back view with her hands up on her head. I printed that photo on my ink jet printer using a silk backed paper product that lets you tear off the backing paper just leaving you the picture on a piece of silk. I arranged four of my card sized abstract images into a 8 by 12 inch size picture. Cutting out the image of the woman left about a quarter inch around the body. I positioned her where I wanted and sunk it into the wax, leaving the body raised a bit. A Good three dimensional effect. Then I decided that the body didn't look right and created a dress for her out of a picture of flowers. I let the dress wrinkle so it was not put on flat, affixing it with an acrylic medium. I had to add some Kleenex to the left hand side and touch it up with some wax to get the effect I wanted. I also added a photograph of a woman statue below her done on heavy gloss card stock where I had obscured the face so you were not quite sure what it was. I finished off the lady's body by using silver wax in lines radiating out starting right at the body extending out over that quarter inch extra fabric I had used to tack her down. I called this picture "Release" and I had my first entry. I next tackled the male form photo which was had a black background with the body shown in shadow. I thought I would bulk up the body so I stretched the photo on the computer to beef up the image. I printed on silk once again and was not sure how to treat this. So I had tossed it onto the table and it landed on some waxed card stock and I could see the wax patterns through the body. This got me thinking right away. I put the silk photo image on a card stock that had already waxed patterns. I next took my iron and lightly touched the silk over the body to draw up the wax underneath through the silk. I loved the effect. I then waxed down on either side of the body as if there was a flowing curtain, and to top it off put a black hat on with my stylus. I called the piece "Tattoo" as the wax pattern that came through gave the effect that the whole body had been tattooed. Again jump in and experiment. I always start each class with this statement. The first rule is there are no rules. In case you would like to have a free drawing lesson I will provide a link below for you to see someone draw a woman from the inside out. Quite interesting, check it out.
Follow this link for the drawing lesson mentioned above.
This is an example of using hot air as a tool to move your wax into patterns. I first used a hair dryer which has too much air and then an embossing gun which was too hot. I found a heat gun at Sears that lets you dial in the temperature you want as well as how much air is put out.
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