Encaustic Progress

Ann Wilson and Patty Picco have recently facilitated my encaustic endeavors. Ann has agreed to rent me studio space in the garage at Ann's Coupe d'Art in Coupeville. This allows me to install a stove vent hood to exhaust the fumes from keeping a bunch of beeswax hot, and I can open the garage door to enjoy Penn Cove breezes.

Patty tutored me for the best part of a day in her own garage studio, introducing me to a variety of techniques and making me drool for a hot palette. Now I'm going to have to build another accessory! I completed one new painting.

The piece pictured above is 12x12" on braced panel. The background is hand made paper, with a layer of unfiltered beeswax under and over it. The photograph is a scene from Silver Lake, Ohio, printed on 55# kozo paper, which I like because the wax really soaks in. I used a steel brush to score the area where I next added the brown stripe mirroring the sidewalk in the photo. Using a clay sculpting tool, I scraped away some of the stripe. "Sprinkles" of the scraped brown wax were dispersed to carry that color throughout the painting. Finally I covered everything with clear medium (filtered beeswax with damar resin to make it harder), being sure to drip a lot over the sides.