As mentioned previously, I brushed on a few layers of encaustic medium on five small 10 x 10″ cradled boards the other day. Today, I thought  I would play around with the flow pen again with no expectations other than seeing how it works and getting used to the line it conveys. I’m used to doing this kind of thing……..just mark making or doodling on canvas or paper and ‘finding’ the beginnings of a painting. I was kind of lost not being able to do this and just continually ‘winging’ it with brush loads of encaustic paint and medium.

I’m not complaining…. as being lost is sometimes a good thing. It can lead me to doing something and creating something  I wouldn’t have ordinarily if I did more planning or if I was more comfortable with my materials. I also like being comfortable with my tools as that kind of familiarity leads to a kind of automatism I find attractive. AND, if you don’t like it, just scrape it away or cover it up and you have a quality of surface by the time you work through it.

Today, I cut some small pieces of Ivory Black encaustic paint off to put in the pen to melt. I just started with a kind of a doodle and just made organic marks. Oh yeah………before that I put a good layer of red that was in one of my paint cans across the top. No reason, just somewhere to start. A color and some black and whites in their various forms.

I used a lot smaller brush to work back into the lines, into and over some of them, varying the whites, pale gray, etc. I fused, I scraped and I added and scraped some more.

The light isn’t that good but I do know one thing from taking pictures of the large piece, Almost Winter, that white  can really be tricky and look either not like white or too chalky. Gotta admit, in other mediums this happens as well but it seems like with encaustic it shows more in the photos. Something will have to be done about that.

This is for want of a title……..Doodles 1. I think I may play around with this flow pen and the doodles some more on the other small panels.

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