Painting stuff: Well I have decided to abandon producing a large format oil painting of the below scene (which was originally done in soft pastels on organza). It wasn’t speaking to me and felt a bit like reinventing the wheel. I am going to be exhibiting this piece anyway in November, so it will get its moment of glory.
I am concentrating nowadays on working with raw (natural rock or refined) mineral (earth) pigments. So, I’m going to do a large piece using earth on the canvas, which is now prepped and waiting.
Degree stuff: I received the Gdrive folder for my autumn assessment last week and have started uploading all the required course work. Even though I’m at level 2, it doesn’t get any easier, the Uni is constantly changing parameters and rules. I hope I do well with this unit, it was an important one for me.
Work/life stuff: I start a new job on Monday! I am excited, nervous and terrified but looking forward to the structure of an office environment again. I’ve been working for myself for so many years, it will be a nice change to be in an office with a bunch of other mad people.
Camping stuff: I will have to wait for a few months I suppose before I can get some time off and then we’re looking at winter. I was going to go camping this weekend but it had to be cancelled due to all sorts of other things going on. If I get chance I still would like to try and squeeze in a wild camp before the end of this year. I have found another site offering semi-wild woodland camping (close to a river this time) – so I hope to get to that at some point.
Health stuff: Well last weekend I tried to take myself out and almost succeeded. I tripped up in the dark and face planted into a concrete plant container. It made a right mess of the right side of my head and the bruising is now all green, purple and yellow. I went and had x-rays last Monday and nothing broken but very badly bruised and I had concussion for a while. The nausea and dizziness is going away but it is SLOW! The doctor at A&E told me it can take over 2 weeks to recover from something like this – bloody hell.
Other stuff: It’s the 1st October today, geez what happened to this year?! It’s been quite momentous for me and seems to be continuing along those lines (despite the head trauma). Next weekend is my birthday and the Saturday I’m going to London to see the Cezanne exhibition at Tate Modern, I can’t wait for that. Then on the Sunday, I’m having a ‘birthday’ lunch with around 20 people t one of our local restaurants … should be fun.
I’m busy trying my very best to do art every day at the moment, it doesn’t always end up being anything I can display on here but I’m working, that’s the main thing. in any event, I am busy with these two pieces at the moment, they are both about 50cm x 40cm on repurposed stretched canvas (that was a process in and of itself let me tell you!).
‘Out there somewhere’ WIP 50x40cm mixedmedia on stretched canvas ‘Out there somewhere 2 WIP 50X40cm mixed media on stretched canvas
I have used acrylics, pastels, inks, alcohol, red tissue paper collage. The tissue paper was used by OCA (Uni for Creative Arts) to package up my coursework manual. I knew i’d find a good use for it one day.
I am finding myself drawn to cold wax paintings as well as encaustic painting techniques – I think I am more ‘in love’ with the idea of encaustic work, as it seems that the depth of colour obtained in some of the works I’ve seen lately online, is really spectacular. While I was looking into cold wax techniques, I bought a small tub of what I thought was cold wax to use as a painting medium. It is cold wax but used primarily for batik work, which I didn’t realise until I started trying it out a few months ago (with no success whatsoever) It looks like this …
Cold wax … er, not really.
I suppose this is yet another reason why buying art equipment from Amazon or eBay is sometimes not the best solution. I should have gone to … (no, not Specsavers but maybe Jacksons or SAA).
Anyway, to cut a long story short. As I left B&Q on Saturday morning (we’d gone to get some plants, as the nurseries are now open), I stopped at their ‘off-cut’ bin and grabbed a couple of pieces of wood. I thought it might be useful to use these bits of scrap wood to try out both encaustic and cold wax work, as I’ve tried tiles and paper and I think wood is the best support for both types of wax painting. I chose a piece of (I think) veneered wood, not sure ‘cos my knowledge of wood is rather non-existent. But it seemed like a good enough size to try out the cold wax medium and oils.
I started off squiggling with charcoal vine stick and then applying yellow oil to the surface, just to see if it would actually go onto the board without smearing off straight away. I didn’t prime the board. Then I thought I should edge it with some tape, so that at the end I’d have a neat finish to the ‘painting’, however it turned out. I used a glass palette (it’s an old photo frame that I’ve reinforced the edges of with tape, so I don’t cut myself).
glass palette with a big splodge of cold wax medium
Then I dolloped a sizeable amount of the wax medium onto the palette and started playing about with the colours, applying to the board and just messing about. I didn’t have a plan or composition, I was just having fun with the texture.
building up paint
For the most part, I used a plastic palette knife to apply the paint, which is both easy and hard, depending on how thick the paint is, or how smooth you want it to be.
texture of the paint
Whilst I was enjoying plastering on the paint, I was not happy with the bumpy clumpy finish. So, I got out my craft iron. Well, it’s oil paint and medium, a bit of heat should smooth it out, right?
after applying heat from a craft iron.
The iron smooshed up the paint, making it smooth in some areas and then when I lifted the iron I got a vein like texture (in the front of the image above) – similar to how encaustic paint works on paper when heated with an iron. I thought that was quite cool but decided to put the iron away, else I’d end up burning the whole thing. I waited for it all to dry and noticed that certain parts of the paint had dried to a dull matt finish. I tried polishing with a tissue but that didn’t do anything. I then decided to apply a coat of the cold wax to fill in the grooves (even out the lumpiness) and see if it would create a surface lustre.
cold wax applied
I left it overnight and then buffed it up with a soft cloth and kitchen towel, it did come up to a soft sheen.
‘Cold wax landscape’ viewed in full sunlight and back lit
The finished landscape reminds me of a day, a few years ago, when I was out in the sun roaming around with my family. We were hiking in the Southern Drakensberg. Weird how that memory rose to the surface in this little painting.
Conclusions
If I’m going to develop cold wax painting anymore, I need to get the right wax – Gamblin or Dorland and also a primer/gesso to use on the board before starting the painting.
Cold Wax vs Encaustic – the big debate I’m having right now with myself.
I know that I am more inclined towards encaustic wax work and feel that this is the medium best suited to how I work. I want the layers, not the clomping thick impasto effect that I’ve ended up with in this cold wax exercise.
Cold wax is easier to set up, safer to work with and I basically have all I need to get going – besides the correct wax.
Encaustic equipment is expensive, there is specific stuff that needs to be bought:
I already have a kitchen appliance that was bought to keep food warm but hardly used, which might work to keep tins of encaustic paint and medium warm. If it doesn’t then, I’ve seen an electric griddle with thermostate (very important) for about £30, which isn’t too bad.
I have seen tins at our local homeware shop that could be used to hold encaustic medium and they have lids.
I’m not keen on getting a butane torch, ‘cos I’m a klutz sometimes and worry I would end up setting fire to the house. I wonder if i can justs get away with using a craft heat gun? I would also need a small fire extinguisher.
Ampersand boards are the professional choice for encaustic work. R&F have a starter set that includes sample boards to try, as well as wax and paints. However, I quite like the idea of reclaiming scrap wood from B&Q and doing my bit for recycling.
Encaustic medium is pricey, so are the paints but it looks like they are used sparingly and the layers built up slowly, which is what I’m going for. Also, things can be embedded in the layers – like leaves, fabric, papers etc. etc.
I have plenty of hair brushes, so wouldn’t have to go out and buy more to start off with.
Maybe before I invest in the encaustic studio equipment, I should first get the correct cold wax and have a few more practises with that – perhaps with more knowledge and the correct equipment, I can get a smooth, layered, translucent effect on a board with cold wax?
I recently obtained a small sample kit which included the encaustic stylus /mini-iron tool and two other brush heads, plus three very tiny blocks of encaustic wax colours (red, blue and yellow – no white, which would have been helpful). The kit included a postcard sized sample of ‘encaustic’ card, which is basically the same as photo card. I first tried the waxes out on the postcard sized paper:
first encaustic on card – postcard size
I had an old watercolour painting I’d started a while ago on some very thick, textured watercolour paper and decided to try and see if I could work on top of it with the encaustic waxes. I also have some oil crayons, so thought I’d try and use them as well to put in some additional colour contrasts and the much needed white.
Mixed encaustic and oil crayons on watercolour paper – about A4
I notice when ‘polishing’ at the end of the process, that there are muddy areas in amongst the red where I have used the oil crayons and some other oil pastels – these do not buff up properly and their colours are nowhere near as bright as the proper encaustic wax paints.
I left the exercises for a while and then whilst I was reading up a bit on encaustic grounds, discovered that it was possible to use ceramic tiles. I have a small box of these that I bought for some other project but never used all of them, so today I decided to try them out with the encaustic wax paints. I also brought out my old craft iron and small travel hair dryer (which works like a craft heat gun). I first cleaned off the tile with isopropyl alcohol and then taped the sides with some masking tape, to give a natural border. I wasn’t sure if this would work, or whether it would pull the wax off the tile at the end but had to give it a go!
Prepared black glossy ceramic tile – 9.5cm square
Then I started to work on the tile, first using the small tool to apply dabs of wax paint and then using the iron to smooch it all around.
It ended up looking like this:
Encaustic on ceramic tile No. 1Tile 1 – close up – texutre
I used the rest of the white oil crayons that i have left, so when I came to do the next one, I thought I’d try a white from my el-cheapo water soluble oils
unsuccessful tile – using some encaustic wax paint but mostly water-soluble oil pastels
Alas, even though it looked quite pretty after I’d done more work on it and removed the tape, the stuff just didn’t adhere to the tile and while I was trying to buff it up to a shine, the wax surface started to rub off.
I went back to trying just the encaustic wax paints for the next tile, which I tried out using just blue first but then broke down and added Caran D’Ache white water-soluble oil pastel, it worked a lot better than the el-cheapo water-soluble oil pastels.
the white is Caran D’Ache Neocolour II
mixing in yellow encaustic paint
Encaustic on ceramic tile 2 (with some Caran’D’Ache Neocolour II water-soluble oil pastels)
The third tile experiment was just using the encaustic wax paints:
Encaustic on ceramic tile 3
The wax is a lot thicker on tile 3 and I like how I created what looks like a tree. Yes, there are dots of a lilac on there, that is an oil wax crayon.
I have a packet of postcard sized glossy photo paper and used this for the last experiment.
Encaustic wax paints on glossy photo-paper – 15cm x 16cm
I got a bit better applying the wax to the paper with this attempt and then when I put the iron on it, it all went crazy! I loved how the iron smooshed it all about. I then continued to work on it with the tiny-iron on the encaustic stylus tool – I’m quite pleased with this one. The iron mashed up the yellow and red to give a lovely golden brown. also because this is white paper, I was able to lift off sections of the wax to create light in the picture. It was easy to burnish up.
Conclusions:
Don’t waste time with cheap wax crayons or using water-soluble oil pastels as they just don’t buff up nicely and most times the wax just doesn’t adhere properly to the ground. Spend some dosh and buy good quality encaustic paints/mediums. Get hold of some panels to work from to make larger pieces. get lots of white. Not necessary to buy a heat gun or encaustic iron at this stage.
Janice Heather Scott 