Tuesday!

Yep it's Tuesday. Now that I work 4 days in a row per week, Monday is the hump day. After that it's a breeze.

Here's a new encaustic painting. This one was done a little differently. I painted some of the flowers with oil paint directly on the wood, and then fused a layer of clear encaustic wax down. Then I painted a few more flowers in oil paint on the wax layer, and fused another layer of wax, etc etc. I like the way the oil paint goes on the wax, and then certain colors sort of break apart when you fuse wax on top of them. There are some cool effects to be had and I may try it with portraits.
24 x 11" encaustic & oil on braced birch wood panel. SOLD

Moonflowers

12 x 12" Original Encaustic painting on birch plywood.

I've had 2 encaustic paintings in the works for some time that I wanted to finish up today. This is the first one. I'm really happy with the darker background with the light yellow oil paint rub over the top. These particular flowers look lunar to me, thus the name. The 2nd is drying before I can add more wax, but nearly there. Both will be in my shop soon.

In other (totally unrelated) news, I've decided to stop using shampoo again. Thick, curly hair reportedly does better without it. I went without before for a time, and noticed good results, but then started shampooing again for some reason that I can't recall. The only problem is you have to go through a grease ball phase first while your hair adjusts. Time to break out the headbands..

Home

Encaustic on hand built birch wood panel 12 x 24"
This is the finished piece with the bird transfers I was working on yesterday. I'd started out last weekend, making an encaustic painting of the bird house in our back yard. I wasn't sure where it was going to go, until I figured out the tranfer method yesterday. I'm really happy with how it turned out. I added some collage elements with the thread and painted over the surface with oil paint in some areas. I did a raw umber oil paint rub over the entire surface to accentuate the texture of the wax, which gave it a nice antique look. I also finally figured out a satisfying way to sign my encaustics using the letter stamp tools I bought months ago.
I've got some hummingbird paintings, flower tiles and another larger encaustic flower piece in the works and I'm aiming to get them all done this week. There truly aren't enough hours in the day.

Wax transfers

With some trial & error, I'm learning how to do image transfers onto wax. This is a detail of a larger piece I'm working on. It's not quite finished, but I'm really excited by the possibilities of collaging images onto the wax. This is how It's done
1. make a xerox copy of an image
2. heat the wax surface where you want to apply it so that it's soft, but still solid.
3. place your xerox image face down on the warm wax.
4. burnish the image - I rubbed the back of the paper with a wooden spoon, but scissor handles seem to work well too.
5. If you're not sure the image is completely transfered, you can heat the back of it with your heat gun- but not too much!
6. apply warm water to the back of the image with a sponge and rub gently.

If all goes well, the image will have transfered onto the wax and the paper with rub away. In some cases, part of my image rubbed away, but even then, the effect is pretty cool.

This is all I could get in before work, but I'm excited to get back to the wax tonight. Though the season premier of my absolute favorite show is on tonight, which could set me back..

Primary Flowers I & II

A pair of new 6x6" encauastic flowers for the shop.

More waxy flowers

24 x 11.5" encaustic on braced birch panel.

Encaustic flowers

5 x 6" encaustic on birch panel
After much experimentation trying to translate my previous flower paintings to encaustics, this is what I've come up with. There's really no controlling wax, which is what I sometimes love and sometimes hate about it. This was a good compromise. I was able to control the wax to some extent and do some drawing in it, which is fun, but there's also some lovely 'mistakes' where the wax blends and does what it will.
They are happy little paintings for Spring, and the best part is they smell fantastic!

oh hello again

Here are some small encaustic paintings I did a while back.  I'm still experimenting with different techniques with the wax, and meanwhile am back into oil painting.  Wax and cold weather aren't as compatible as I had hoped.  I'll start posting some more oil paintings tomorrow.  I'm not outright promising a new 'nearly daily painting', but secretly just between you and me, that's what I'm hoping for.  So, I need to get to painting tonight, just as soon as I tear myself away from harpoon lagoon.

Phone for you

I finished another encaustic painting! I'm loooving playing with drawing into the wax. I've got to get some more supports built this week to keep going. I've been bracing thin birch panels with pine strips of wood to creat sort of a box that sits out from the wall. I've left the sides wood on this piece, but I may paint them white.. I could really use my table saw, since I've been using a hand saw to cut the wood and it's really slowing me down. I sort of like the less than perfect results you get with handtools however. Someday we will have enough space to store all my art supplies and tools...
Meanwhile I sold a painting on Etsy! One of my favorites "Beauty and the Bird", so it's off to the post office today and I have some $$ towards a much needed digital camera yipee!
Lots to do today.... but first off to the gym.