Encaustic adventure…..

Encaustic - meaning "to burn into"- is an art form I thought I would leave on the 'back burner,' so to speak for a good while yet.  However, an adventurous artist from our Big Sky Artists' group, who is also a fantastic teacher, agreed to give us a class and these are my results.

lower part of picture below

Encaustic applications date back to ancient Greece when it was used to highlight statues. Egyptians used it to decorate vases and tombs and later, it was used for icon paintings.  This is an art form which uses hot waxes and paints and at times must have been rather dangerous and toxic.  It became less popular once oil paints made the application of colour much easier.  Now, with the development of new products, coloured beeswaxes, special irons and heat resistant papers and materials, this art form is becoming more common.

Some artists use a thicker form of the wax on canvas and use it in conjunction with acrylics/oils.  In the class, we simply used a special type of 'waxy' paper, specially made coloured wax blocks, and small hot irons. A stylizing tool was also available but I didn't get to it.

I was intrigued by the variety of marks one can make simply with the iron! Anyway, here are my results with a few 'close ups' as well.

 This is supposed to be a fantasy landscape…  It is the largest one at 8" x 12"

 

Here I was thinking of canola fields.
6" x8"

Below, in the enlargement of part of this picture, you can see some drops of wax.  If one was to pour the wax it would be much thicker - but that would also entail a whole other work place.

 
 The ones below are 4" x 6" and were the result of trying out the 'technique' of using the iron.

 

 

on this one you can see the shape of the iron quite clearly

  

This is an enlargement of the bottom left corner of the picture above.  

There are fascinating pictures within pictures.