Encaustic paint's been around for about 3000 years, but is enjoying an upswing in popularity right about now.
We started met up at Jeff's studio in Northeast Minneapolis- he had prepared six spots, where we shared 3 griddles.
Here are two dollops (?) of cadmium yellow and alizarin crimson. The paint is melted onto the tray directly from a brick of solid wax at 180 degrees!
Very quickly, things got messy. Here's my palette. If the brushes were off the hot plate for a minute, they'd harden as fast as wax cools.
Just another shot of the workspace.
My co-worker Jill is applying oil paint to scratched off parts of the wax. When she wipes away the excess, and fuses the wax with some creme-brule torches,it'll provide a nice solid outline.
This was my first piece. I decided to emulate Fayum mummy portraits, to varying degrees of success.
I entitled this one "Yellow And Green Romantically Pursue Blue As Orange Cries Bitter Tears."
I call him "Snuggles." This one was very popular with my co-workers.
The chinese here says "It'll never end unless the world ends." A bit of dark philosophy I translated into Chinese with the help of Google Translate. The accompanying illustration is a LEGO man getting destroyed. The background plays with some textured paper trapped and burned under wax.
Last one of the workshop for me. I had 5 minutes before we had to start cleaning up.
From another angle, you can see how textured this paint is. Lots of layers built up!
In a bit of other news, I helped paint this photo-op flat for a family friend's (pictured) daughters (not pictured) grad-night lock-in. I actually painted his a month a go, but I figure that now I can reveal it, since the lock-in is long done.
The fjords of Norway with the aurora borealis...
TTYL!
