Hake Brushes and Encaustic

Went to the studio today with a few experiments in mind. Thought it wise to limit the image to two, so I could focus. One was glazing, which turns out to be a really great time. It simply means adding a LOT of the plain wax/resin to the colored block chunks - so the colors are used more as tints than paints. I had been frustrated that the colored encaustics were too dense and I lost the luminosity, but it's back using glazes. Glazing would not work for everything, but will be a nice tool in the box.

Having looked at a ton of Byzantine encaustic portraits this morning, I wanted to play with doing a face...large area of flesh. The glazing came into play here, as the tints were very sublte.

BUT - the big surprise today was the brush. I had bought some hake brushes from Dick Blick and have seen hake mentioned in many encaustic publications. Still I had not tried them because the bristles simply seemed too soft and I didn't think they'd let much happen. BOY - was I wrong! The first stroke of the hake brush put down a mark that was as smooth as silk...totally different from any other tool I've tried thus far. Again - not for everything, but I'm going to be ordering a bunch more of these brushes in every size they have.

Still working on finding the best melting containers. I may look for a teeny crock pot for the plain wax, so I have a constantly-available source of melted wax to add to other things. Off to Goodwill.

Dental Tools

Started this piece for a demo(posted earlier). Last night the dental tools called, so I played with etching and incising and cutting back layers to reveal previous layers at various angles and depths. Should have waited till the paint I'd used for the etching had dried...both my hands were totally green and waxy. Thank goodness for pumice soap!

Studio

For what it's worth, I'm posting a photo of my studio - clay to the left, painting in the middle, encaustic to the right and beyond that, framing. It's an all-purpose playground.

Sate of Mind

Starting a new job outside the home has taken some adjusting of schedule. When I do get home, I've felt guilty leaving my dog alone...yet again...so I can go down to the studio to work. But, I think I'm settling in and starting to work it all out.

Got some clay pieces started to continue a raku mini-show I'll be having in September at Lansing Art Gallery. This weekend I want to prep some clay which will be worked together with encaustic - TOTAL experiments, but there in lies the fun. Have a couple of encaustic pieces I want to finish up and a new one to get out of my head and onto the board. Want to take several encaustic pieces to Lansing Art Gallery this week, too.

So - revving up and hoping to start moving forward again. Writing this is a bit like getting in gear. Hope I have enough gas to get where I want to go!

Reach Demonstration

Reach Art Studios is unique and wonderful and serves kids in the best ways art can. It was fun to be there for an encaustic demo yesterday. We had a few other guests come, too.

I wanted to quickly run through some of the basic techniques of etching, layering, embedding and filling in. The piece was still warm when time ran out, so we couldn't really show it all. The birds in this piece was based on some papier mache birds the kids were working on when I arrived.

This is a less than great photo, but I like how it shows the waxiness of the surface. There's still work to be done on this piece, for sure.

Bird on a Wire

The first encaustic piece since getting the grant. As part of the my contract I'm going to blog about working with encaustic.

This piece started out with leaves and such on the left. I was going to do a very realistic apple on the right. It was just too uptight for my taste. I scraped and layered and the texture got more and more exciting.
For the bird I tried a transfer process - putting graphite on the back of thin paper, then using a hard point to draw, embedding the graphite into the wax. Oil pastels work very nicely for tinting surfaces.

The new heat gun is great - has variable temperature and blow.

At the end I rubbed acrylic into the whole surface, then wiped it off to further bring out the texture. There are a couple of wax-filled incised, then scraped lines, because I just wanted to try that.

Gouache Book is IN

Yesterday the printed books arrived. Have to say I'm really pleased with the results. It's so fun to see this out of my head and real. I'm hoping to reach illustration and painting teachers who might consider using this as a text. It's meant for anyone who's ever thought they might like to try gouache, which is a remarkable medium.

Available HERE.