Comeuppance

by | Feb 3, 2010 | , | 0 Comments

Yeah…. just get to thinking you know what you’re doing and the powers that be will let you know you do not.

I went up to the studio today to work some more on prepped boards. I rummaged around and found some nifty paper I bought in Carcassonne France quite a number of years ago. Yes, I noted it has a glossy surface but I thought I should try it anyway after all I’m still learning to do this wax painting and transfer stuff. I like collage but sometimes it would be better to have a transfer of certain lines or designs instead of collaging them in.

SO, I just heated my surface, slapped the torn paper on and rubbed it to death. While doing this I noted I wasnt’t see a lot of lines coming through the paper as this paper is a little thicker than just plain old copy paper. I kept on though until I figured it was time to try the water dissolve and rub off thing. I gotta tell you, you need a lot more water and rubbing with this paper and it wasn’t entirely successful if you want a transfer that looks perfect. I can thank those same powers that be that I don’t. My perfection is imperfection.

It was still a flat transfer since I rubbed away so much of the thickness of the paper but it might not be worth it really to use this kind of thicker paper with a sealer on it for this technique.

Then I thought….OKAY…where am I going next with this piece so I rummaged around for some more paper and came up with a dark navy almost black looking paper. I say black since it looked that way until I took a picture of it and it looks dark blue there. I assure you it is more black than blue. I tore, fused, cut, laid it down, fused. Painted yellow paint on places, fused. You cannot forget to keep fusing every layer.

I got tired, hubby was home, and so I decided that was it for the day. I made a bunch of my own kind of marks into the surface……OOPs, now it looks like one of my landscape marks in the middle so I had to do some negative painting. Finally I decided I would have to put it away and come back and see if a miracle would happen over night.

So lesson learned (although I already knew it)…..never think you know how to do anything. Some days are flow days, some days are lesson days.

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Patricia Baldwin Seggebruch workshop

by | Feb 2, 2010 | , , , | 1 Comment

Oh my….what will I report from the Patricia Baldwin Seggebruch workshop held last week at the Encaustic Center in Richardson, TX (Dallas)?  First of all, we had a fabulous time talking, painting and learning with a good friend from Mississippi, Cathy Hegman. Also, it is also wonderful meeting the artists you know already and the ones you don’t in a setting such as a workshop where you are all sharing your experiences/knowledge.

Trish is a delightful person. She demonstrated several times a day the way that she uses wax, collage, embossing, transferring images, etc. We then all set to try out all these techniques we may or may not have done in the past. We all learned a few things or or a lot of new things (depending on individual experience) to take home with us and interpret in our own work.

I’d never really been fortunate in transferring images before. It was better to actually see someone do this instead of reading the instructions. With encaustic I think it is easier since the method we used used water to remove the extraneous paper left on the board. It was so much better to not have to worry about washing off more than you intended with the wax being waterproof.  I found that I had not been rubbing the back of the paper with the transfer near enough. Also, pouring water on and rubbing it off is a lot easier and less time consuming than using a mister……at least for me.We also used a laser or toner based transfer……and water. No solvents to have to go outside for or anything special other than that. Have your wax surface slightly warm, lay down your transfer image face down into the wax and rub and rub and rub with the back of a spoon, etc. Finally, can start pouring on small amounts of water and rubbing with your fingers until all the paper residue is gone and your image shows. If there is a little left, the next layer of clear medium with cause it to just disappear.

I did two pieces this way to try to reinforce this in my mind for the future. I have a lot of things I might want to photograph and use this method on. All in all, I probably did about 7-8 smallish pieces running from 8 x 10″ and down during the three day workshop. the two I’m showing here with the transfers are both 10 x 8″.

During the workshop, I also worked with using fabrics as collage elements along with other stuff you find around…threads, slightly 3-d stuff to embed. Whatever interests you to apply to your work. As a painter I tend to forget all these nifty little techniques most of the time and keep just painting. However, now and then I want to know how to get a certain look for special paintings…..OR how to incorporate elements I haven’t used much before.

The reason to take the workshop is that I’ve only taken a one day thing about 6 months after I started working with encaustic. I figured I might be making things harder on myself than I needed to so I was going to see if there were easier ways to do some of the things I was doing. Some like the transferring were good to show me a simpler way. Other things, looks like I’d been doing okay all along.

All of us need to get out once in a while and get together with other artists ……and maybe pick up a thing or two. That’s the great thing about workshops, you get to do it all.

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Doodles

by | Jan 16, 2010 | , | 1 Comment

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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Encaustic Collage..almost completed

by | Jan 9, 2010 | , | 5 Comments

I didn’t work for very long on this painting today. I played arounnd with adding some linear work with the flow-pen tool, and added some more medium, fusing and scraping some as I went along.

When I reached this point I couldn’t figure out anything more that would add to it without overdoing it. SO, I quit. It’s possible something else will come to me…but I don’t see it right now.

I’m also posting the close up of one of the areas of line work with the flow-pen.  this painting is certainly got a southwestern or western flavor to it. With the aerial maps, shapes and colors, I’m still considering a title with some of these elements.

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Encaustic Collage, continued

by | Jan 8, 2010 | | 1 Comment

I fired up all the wax today when I finally got up to the studio. At least we have heat up there plus the wax heat. Cold weather for days and the furnace goes out. That’s always the way it goes. It will be next week before they get a new one here from the factory that fits our situation.

SO, on to working on the piece I started with the collage yesterday. I just kept pulling out more paper and tacking them down with more encaustic medium under the pieces…moving from one relationship of color and shape and size to another.

I’m now at this stage of the process on this one and will continue on tomorrow.

I really haven’t a clue  where I’m going so I hope it turns into a good place. This image is a close up of the area upper off center.

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Encaustic Collage

by | Jan 7, 2010 | , | 3 Comments

I worked in the studio all afternoon until the wind howling ran me out. We’re expecting 17 tonight…and that’s way cooler than usual for northeastern Texas.

Today, I started working on the other 24 x 24″ cradled board as I think the other one I posted last time needs some think and observation time before I proceed further.

This one already had a little beeswax on it so I started looking through collage papers that didn’t already have acrylic or anything that couldn’t absorb wax. I find that if I “think’ about all this too much it just stifles me. So I just started throwing a lot of paper around and came across some aerial maps from my trip to Arizona a few years ago. The pilot (Mr I fly for art) gave me his old maps.

Working with these should be fun…but it doesn’t matter if they are there and readable when I get through or not. Probably for sure I don’t want them to be there TOO much and TOO readable. I got out other papers and then started laying them out. I didn’t really ‘see’ that much so I figured I might as well go for it and it would come as it darn well wanted to. These paintings have a mind of their own. And if I don’t like it, I can just melt it all off or cover it all up.

SO, I have part of maps, and a big piece of dark blue paper.  I cut some of the pieces of maps into strips and laid that down in places along the bottom. These strips and the blue do not have any wax on them yet………… I had to leave them all when I had to start closing down all the window blinds for the cold winds coming in.

This time I triple checked I turned off my encaustic medium that had finally gotten ready after being stirred what seemed like all afternoon.

We’ll see how it goes next session……..

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Studio Time

by | Jan 4, 2010 | , , | 0 Comments

Cropped/Close up almost is a whole painting in itself, huh!

Cowboy country….that’s what I get to thinking as I get to work on this painting in the studio today. I’ve been playing around with the encaustic again. I’ll continue to play some more as I have a show of encaustic coming up at the Encaustic Center in Richardson, TX  in April.

First this is…….I ordered some nifty tools from Fine Art Store Enkaustikos quite a long time ago and just haven’t used them at all yet. I got a Flow tool…kind of like a batik pen, some hot point thingies and the regulator so they don;t burn everything up. Doncha just love all my real great descriptions and names for everything. Well………I have to do this since I can’t run all the way out and upstairs just to see the names of this stuff.

 

So… I played with the Flow Pen first. Well not exactly first, I did have to put something on that board beside some wax I laid down the other day. I rummaged into some collage stuff and tore some paper up and just started putting it down with wax. I know I may not be doing all this the right way (which might be the easiest way) but I’m bumbling along doing it as I figure it will work. I saturated the paper with wax and put it on the already waxed board. Then I fired up the Flow Pen with some wonderful orange paint they sent me as a bonus when I ordered the pen and whoa……..this is great! You can make all kinds of little squiggly lines and dots with this thing. Only bad thing is my cord is kinda kinked and I’m trying to figure out how to not waste paint by laying it down the wrong way.

Mentioning kinks……….there are a ton of electric cords everywhere when you work with encaustic. There must be a better way to organize all this stuff but I haven’t found it yet.

So…then that all looked fun but it is not a painting to make a lot of fun stuff playing around. I finally just had to start adding some more papers and then I added paint and on and on. At one point it made me think of all the fences here at the farm and the view down to the lake…….then I saw mountains which we do not have here although we have rolling hills. Oh well……who cares as all this will get layered over several times I imagine before it it is through.

Here are the in process pictures……and one up-close that looks like a mini-painting.

 

 

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