Waxing Artistic

Rubytuzday

It was rather on a whim I decided to take the most recent FASM workshop offering. Encaustics are a medium I knew little about but found intriguing. After seeing some originals in person at the FASM general meeting where the teacher for the workshop, Cora Brittan, gave us a presentation, I thought if I could manage to attend and cover my usual barn work, I would! I even had everything on the materials list, so I didn't have to buy anything.

Simply speaking, encaustic painting is a process that uses wax. Techically what Cora taught us was mixed media, involving everything from drawing, ink, linocut printmaking and collage. I decided to keep it as simple as possible - I'm a painter, so I felt a bit out in left field! Like a good workshop participant, I did a couple of drawings the night before, so I wouldn't spend half the day working on my drawing and not get a chance to actually play with the wax. It's something I always encourage my own workshop participants to do, with varying degrees of success!

Poseidon

I found out, very quickly, that it would take a bit of trial and error to come up with work I was actually happy with, though I will show you what I did anyway. I used a combination of technical pen, coloured pencil and oil pastel for my drawing. The first one, which I've posted at the top, I went back over a second time with the wax - once I had a better idea of how it worked! The photo doesn't show it, but I used some of my very cool Sennelier iridescent oil pastels over top of the wax as well.


At the very least, I had some fun with colour today. The last one I didn't finish, only putting the wax over the drawing I did with the tech pen. You can see I used the same drawing again - all of the colour is from the waxes. Certainly nothing resembling the intricate designs our instructor produces! I believe I will be sticking to oils for the time being, but every now and then it's nice to just play! I kind of felt like I was back in grade school!