Below I continue to give you a sneak peak at the process of creating an encaustic painting (see original post here). I apologize for the spotty quality of the photos. As you can probably tell, the pictures were all taken at different times during the day and evening. Unfortunately, I’m currently working out of my kitchen (where, oh, where is my dream studio?) and the lighting in my apartment is dismal at best. Encaustic paintings are notoriously difficult to photograph even under ideal conditions because the wax reflects and absorbs light in a very unpredictable manner. I get the best results taking photos outdoors in natural light, but had no desire to do trek up and down three flights of steps every hour or so for this blog posting. So there you go.
Here I decided that the natural encaustic medium I was using was too opaque for what I had in mind and started scraping and fusing to remove the trouble spots.
Eventually I scraped all the way down to the underpainting using clay carving tools. You can see the amount of wax that was removed, which I can recycle into fresh medium for another project. I then used a metal palette knife in conjunction with the heat gun to mix the remaining caramel-colored wax into the oil paint underneath. This resulted in a thin, textured underpainting layer with a very “painterly” feel to it.
I re-coated and fused the surface with a thin layer of clear encaustic medium. After transferring the image with tracing paper I carved the image even deeper into the wax. Using oil paints and oil bars I filled the crevices with pigment and then wiped off the excess.
I continued to carve and add to the scenery using the same technique. The oil paint leaves a residue that adds to the misty, atmospheric effect of the background. Are you starting to see what the image is going to be yet?
Check back soon to see the final painting…
One Comment
Love seeing how this gorgeous piece was done! Thanks for sharing!!!