Here’s a little piece I made when I was introducing a friend to encaustics. I call this one Love Letter. It has a copy of an old French postcard, some watch gears, a watch spring, and lots of different colors of wax. Sometimes a piece goesfast, sometimes they don’t. This was one of those that just flowed right along.
For this one, rather than do a carbon transfer, I just put the paper right in the piece. To do that I first coated the cradled board with beeswax…smoothed that out, then placed the paper down and put a layer of beeswax over it. Next is the fun part…heat the waxed paper and board with an iron, or head gun, and watch the paper absorb the wax and become adhered and a part of the art.
Here’s my palette of colors…although I didn’t use them all, this is what I had on hand to choose from. I used the red, green, metallic gray, black and clear. I also bought some encaustic sticks to play with.
For me creating art is a way of expressing myself…it doesn’t always turn out pretty, but I sure enjoy the process. Most of the time I enjoy the pieces I’ve made.
Here is a picture of my friend Sandi’s first encaustic piece. It’s turned out very cool. It’s fun to see how different people approach art. I love that she did a sketch first and then melted and moved wax around it…it gives it a feeling of movement and mood. We also learned that the graphite will move with the wax…so keep control of wax.
Sandi used two encaustic oil sticks and black wax, along with plain beeswax and graphite pencil.