Encaustic on paper

I’ve been fiddling about recently with encaustic wax paint, doing a million tests on different types of paper.  From the really thick and quite expensive heavy-duty mixed media papers to plain old cartridge paper, or printer paper.  I haven’t tried Japanese papers yet – that’s on the shopping list. From my tests, the cartridge paper seems to produce the most pleasing result but these are early days and lots more experiments/technique try outs are on the cards. I have fallen for this stuff big time!

I bought a set of 16 colours, thinking that these would be reasonably sized bars but they turned out to be very tiny and not at all practical for the type of work that I want to do.  They have, however, been helpful insofar as practising techniques and I will continue to use them until I am ready to do something seriously planned out, that I would be happy to sell.   The set included lovely irridescent pearl white, shimmering pale blue, bronze and a really dark emerald green.

I am going to buy R&F encaustic wax paint next, which is pretty expensive. I will get primary colours to start off with and then add to the set. At least the R & F blocks are fairly large and the pigments look divine.    Anyhow, these are a few of my more successful experiments that I did last night.

‘Woodland’ encaustic wax on cartridge paper – A3

‘Social distancing’ Encaustic wax on mixed media paper – A3

‘Eye in the Sky’ Encaustic wax including irridescent shimmer colours on cartridge paper – A4

‘The Highlands’ Encaustic wax including irridescent shimmer colours on cartridge paper – A3

The one below is my first larger experiment (just over A3), which I did a week or so ago. The tiny blocks of primary colour waxes I used for this piece came with the encaustic mini-iron tool These highly pigmented colours are now finished!

‘Man in the Hills’ Encaustic wax on cartridge paper – A3

Close up – ‘Man in the Hills’

The title comes from my favourite Burning Spear song. (Yes, the Rasta)