I have made the decision to close down my encaustic art blog and just have this one for everything. However, I do not want to lose some of the pictures so I have decided to transfer my old work over. So, here we go:
I have been attempting to do some kind of monoprinting/monotyping using encaustic art.To start with I painted a very basic picture onto one card and then placed a blank piece of glossy card over the painting and gently used the iron to reheat the wax through the card. When sufficiently heated I pulled the cards apart and hey presto....two identical cards (so not quite as mono as it started out to be). In the true style of encaustic I then changed them both slightly by painting in additional features thus making them unique. I loved how the blue ones turned out as it looks like the sun is shining through at the top of the picture. I did a few more but these and Lava fields are my favourites.
Seaworlds
Lava Fields
This next encaustic was a 'mistake' that I went back over and re-did. I suppose thats why I love encaustic because if you go wrong you can just use the heated iron to remove the wax and start again. As I was removing the wax I got the streaky effect in the background and decided to keep it and layer wax over the top. See what you think.....
The next one is a favourite of mine:
With the next one I was just messing around with red and black to see how it would work out. I think it has a kind of 'lava' feel about it, looks kind of like a fire at the centre. Everyone sees something different though so let me know what you think:
I could add several more but the last one for the moment is this one. I did start off with reds and then decided to just add blues, greens, purples, gives it an 'alien' world look. The tree was added with a stylus which is like drawing with a pen.
This week I have tried my hand at a slightly larger encaustic painting. This one is 4" x 4" and apart from the stamped seahorses, the only colour used was blue. I have called it 'Beneath a Waterfall' and it was made as a gift for someone. See what you think:
The first one is called Dusk. I started with the skyline first (white with a couple of dabs of pink and yellow) and the landscape in grey (grey block adding black to get darker shades), using the iron. The tree was drawn using the stylus and the foliage using the brush attachement.
The next one is 'Dawn'
White heavily loaded with pink for the sky, grey for the mountains in the background and then green with touches of red for the front. The tree done exactly the same as before and the red blossom was added as an afterthought.
This next one is called 'Waterside'
The last one I called 'Three Sisters at Sunset'
I have called this one 'Boat Trip' because I can see a little man sat in a boat....can you?
Now, I am not very good at painting trees in wax so its something I keep practising. This one I called Autumn (for obvious reasons). The background was created by just painting on a thin layer of orange wax, using the iron to remove most of the colour from the bottom part of the card. I then drew in the outline of a tree using the stylus.
The edges around the card were done using the iron and building up the colour/texture by 'dabbing' the iron gently around the edges until I was happy with the look.
Last I added the leaves on the tree using the wire brush type fitting on the stylus.
I was messing around with colour on this next one, as you can see by the rather wishy washy background. This was a mistake caused by using too many pastel colours and just not leaving it alone. I think I managed to salvage the card with the tree but at one point it was in serious danger of being binned.
This next one was made by using strips that I cut off another encaustic painting. I didnt want to throw the strips away so mounted them onto black card.
I have just realised that I use a lot of blue waxes in my paintings.... anyway, this one was a 'mistake' as an area of the card just did not get covered in wax. The finished result looks like an eye to me. You cannot paint the same encaustic picture twice but I dont think I could do anything like this one again if I tried.
So far all the encaustics I have shown you have been painted onto white card. These next two were painted onto black card. I found this really difficult to do as the waxes do not work as well on black, the texture doesnt stand out as well.
This card was painted using white and silver only.
I have to laugh at my pathetic attempt to draw a dragon on this next card - my stylus slipped and there was no going back so the 'dragon' ended up with a funny shaped head and a really long nose.
Back to white card again now and trying out red colours. Background first, tree with stylus second, edges with the iron third and last the leaves with stylus.
White card with yellows and greens:
Last one for encaustic work done on white card. I wanted to use colours that really did not go together naturally for an 'alien' look. This was created just using the iron.
