Thursday, March 15, 2007

Catching up


I've been busy with no time to take out to blog. More important. truthfully, is that when there was time there was really nothing I wanted to write.

I've continued to work on some of the panels. These are the two blue ones. Also I have two red ones probably about ready to put away as well. The green pair...they are still staring at me relentlessly from the wall easel.

I went to Baton Rouge at the end of the week to trade out some paintings with my gallery there. They ended up keeping a couple that I planned to bring back. But hey, that's alright if someone is looking at them over at their other location.

My friend Christy offered me a place to stay overnight while I was there. We had a good long talk that evening and went out to her studio to look at encaustic equipment and supplies. She sent me home with some beeswax pellets and an old rival crockette for the paraffin wax to clean your brushes...and a bunch of oriental paper to play with. So I broke down and sent off for the electric palette made by Encaustikos...and the book everyone recommends by Joanne Mattera. I was getting ready to order some pigments, mediums,etc. when it dawned on me to wait until I get back from the trip to Dallas next week as that will be about the time they would be delivered. I have a lot of oil pastels and even some paint sticks in the studio so I can use those, too. I found a place called Evans Encaustics on the internet. I think I'll order some basic supplies from them and see how this goes. It will be another learning curve as you can't use acrylic in your underpainting with encaustics. My plan....if you can call it that is to learn to use wax with my collage work...and make it just another form of mixed media. It occurred to me that I might be able to encapsulate the acrylic painted papers with something that is compatible with encaustic. If anyone knows of such ...let me know. I'm thinking maybe...white shellac.The main thing is to find something that won't repel the wax from sticking but that will seal up the acrylic paint on the paper.

5 comments:

  1. I love these two blue panels! Both texture and color look beautiful, what size are they?

    Greetings, Marina

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  2. yummy blues in these paintings. very nice! so why encaustic? i've noticed other artists mentioning it lately as well. just curious.

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  3. Marina...they are 12 x 12 Ampersand shadow boxes painted on the back side.
    Mary...I thought about encaustic for a long time. I waited because I didn't want to just jump on a bandwagon too many others were following. However, I love surface quality and encaustic has such a wonderful one...I may not like the process but I'll give it a try to see. I don't see it as becoming "an encaustic artist" as much as just another process to contribute to getting what I want my work to be.
    Thanks for the comments.......

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  4. I am looking forward to seeing your progress with wax. I too am wondering how to incorporate wax with paintings. Must get that book too!

    Kari x
    www.inkytinker.typepad.com

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  5. Hi Kari...this is posted here but the waxes are in later posts. The paintings in this post are acrylic. I'll try to post a few more photos of some of the encaustics next.

    Cheryl

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