My class ended too soon last night. You’d think 3 hours would be plenty of time to play around with combinations of paper and wax, but it turns out that no, it’s not. I shouldn’t be surprised. I spent 7 1/2 hours scrapbooking on saturday and only finished a few pages.I managed to almost finish one piece, at least.
I was pretty proud of my sketch in this piece. I don’t consider myself good at sketching or drawing, but my tree and bird turned out pretty well, I think. :) At least, as long as I kept the tree dead with no little branches or leaves. But it works.
I did the white base color first, and while that cooled I sketched and cut out my tree. It might be a good idea to experiment with different pens. Rice paper is very absorbent, and many of the pens you’ll use will bleed into the paper. But it gives it a rough quality that I liked with my tree. In other sketches, I might want to find a pen that doesn’t bleed quite so much, but still shows dark on the paper.
I pressed my sketch onto the wax where I wanted, then painted over it with some clear wax. For this painting, I painted the whole piece with clear, and then I use the heat gun to very gently smooth out the wax. The one thing about using wax paper is that the edges tend to poke through the wax. You can smooth them down with your finger or brush while the wax is warm, but don’t push too hard. I made that mistake and gouged a whole chunk of wax out of my piece. Sigh… I am learning more and more how much patience is required if you want to paint with encaustics. I spent a lot of time not only painting and sketching, but using the heat gun to make sure the paper was saturated, the wax was smooth, and my mistakes were covered. One heavy finger can do a lot of damage, so take your time and be PATIENT. I keep having to remind myself of this.
I added the brown on the bottom on top of the clear, and I really like how it became multi-dimensional. I don’t know if you can see it very well, but the brown mixed just a little with the clear underneath it, and I love it. I think it was just the finishing touch my sketch needed.
Like everything with encaustic, this technique will take some practice and a little finesse. But I think it’s been my favorite technique we’ve learned so far. Now I just need to practice my sketches and drawings. I guess I could just do a series of trees…
Here is the other piece I worked on last night. I wanted to see what the paper would look like against black, with some gold ink this time. This one is why I was sad to see the class end- you can it is nowhere near finished. However, I am fairly pleased that the gold stands out so well, despite the fact that the paper is still visible. I need to see if I can get more of the air bubbles out, and then maybe I’ll add a little red.
