Changed my mind!
Yep, it’s the perogative of artists and women everywhere that we can change our minds.
Overnight I kept thinking….why not just use this shipment as a test for an encaustic to go ground (4 day ground at that)…….and see what happens? At least it’s only one piece. I packed it up good in its own little storage box, put it in the middle of another panel (not encaustic) in it’s own little box …and then more small paintings on the top and bottom. I even put some styrofoam in and around to help insulate and keep it all from moving.
Other reason……..I need to get the stuff all put away that stretches from the dining table to the work table in the studio to the storage closet. BIG MESS is an understatement.
On my way to FedEX I got a call from my daughter to keep the grandkids this afternoon so it’s a good thing I was already on my way. I felt a little guilty for being so busy lately so we made brownies. Their dad came to get them just as the brownies came out of the oven so they took half home so I won’t be tempted and I saved the others for Curry when he gets home tomorrow.
So the work should be there before I head off to the show in AZ and I hope they work for the gallery when they see them in person.
Hum…maybe I can relax for about an hour with the newspaper.
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Moving right along…another new gallery!
I’m moving right along……packing up a dozen more paintings for a gallery in Seattle. I hope that things go well and my work will work in the gallery there………in other words, SELL for them and me. It’s a gallery that has been there for about 34 years, Gallery Mack, Art Connection. Whatever happens the owner is a super nice lady from my contact with her so far. Since there will be one encaustic in the shipment I think I’ll wait until Monday so it won’t have to be in a storage warehouse over a week-end….and possibly a lot of heat. I guess this will be a test of sorts to see how ground shipments will go with wax.
I got the invitations in the mail for sending out for my show at Joyous Lake Gallery that will open August 3 in Pinetop-Lakeside, AZ. This will be my first visit to AZ. I hear it is very pleasant in the White Mountains compared to the heat of the rest of the state in August. I’m looking forward to meeting the gallery owner, Gwen Pentecost, in person finally….super lady.
Wow………….now I’m finally getting the studio sorted out a little and can get back to working on the last little encaustic panel. (Good gosh, it’s cobalt violet and orange so far). Next on the agenda is to work on acrylic and canvas again for a bit through some of this heat. Encaustic might be best in the cooler weather when possible. I did go out and look up the beeswax people near here. It was only filtered one time so not as white as I might like for light paints….but it will do fine for darker or medium tones. I was afraid to buy their white pharmaceutical grade since they didn’t know if it was chemically whitened. I’ll just have to get that stuff from somewhere else when I buy the damar resin crystals. Sooner or later I need to learn to make my own medium if I’m going to work larger. And I ordered some 32 x 32 and 24 x 24 panels………..
With two new galleries, it’s going to call for lots of time in the studio. Seems like it’s either too many paintings on hand or not enough. But that sounds great to me.
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More encaustics
I didn’t add a photo the other day while reporting on my trip to Dallas. I was working on my 10th encaustic when I left and started an 11th one at Deanna Wood’s one day encaustic workshop. The one I was working on when I left is now finished (I think). I’ve found that encaustic is kinda like soft pastel, not finished until out the door as you can keep thinking of little tweaks here and there you might add or subtract.
Anyway, the one I was working on when I left is a collage and I used some images from a Whistler show I saw at the Fort Worth Modern back a while ago. So it’s titled Patina Series 10, Salute to Whistler. It will actually need more time to “cure” since I used more oil paint in this than usual and it takes longer before you can actually buff it up well.
The other encaustic painting, Patina Series, 11 is strictly encaustic paint……a landscape. I started it at Deanna’s studio but just did what I’ve been doing on other pieces…..loving that texture but being careful that it isn’t texture just for texture’s sake. After all, it’s the painting, not the medium.
One more little 12 x 12″ panel to go………oh yeah, and my homemade 24 x 24″ canvas covered panel.
It’s getting hotter and hotter, might have to do some acrylic on canvas for a time.
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Stoking the creative fires!
Stoking the creative fires!
Well…………let me tell you, there is nothing like getting together with other artists to stoke the creative fires! And I am feeling SO GOOD…………although I have to admit it doesn’t take too much to make me feel good. Someone (galleries) saying they love my work,hanging it, and I hope, selling it will make me feel a mile high, talking with friends, eating good food with a couple of glasses of wine…that will do it for me.
With all this said…I’m coming back from a 4 day trip to Dallas to move work to a new gallery, Artizen Fine Arts, taking an encaustic workshop north of the area where I will be staying/visiting with my daughter and an artist friend or two joining us………all at the same time.
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Making Panels
What a Mess!
I’m making a big mess……..or should I say extending the big mess in my studio. Soon I’ll have no where to work/paint. I decided…heck, make some panels for a little larger encaustic paintings. I can do it…yeah!
So I dug out all the metal rulers and a square, an old miter box (although I’m not going to miter), glue and clamps and set out to make the first one of two 24 x 24″ panels. These will be framed with floaters if my experimenting turns out to resemble something I’d want to put my name on. (hum…reminds me I’m not putting my name/signature on these pieces on the front…hope that’s okay with people if they’re signed on the back only).
I’m letting the glue dry now and will then stretch some unprimed cotton canvas I found in the closet over the panel. I’m using 1/4″ plywood for the face, and something called aspen wood( not real hard though) on the back for the braces. Seems like I delved deep in my memory and decided I thought butted corners are stronger than mitered and that helped me just plod along since I’m not that great with a saw that you have to put muscle power behind anyway. I placed, glued and clamped two edges that were parallel first (hope that’s a good idea) and measured to cut off the other pieces to fit between on the other sides. I did as little measuring and sawing as possible by buying this stuff pre-cut at Lowe’s.
I haven’t read anything about having to put a coat of anything on the back for warpage so on I go. I won’t need anything on the front of the panel since encaustic wax doesn’t react with wood like oil does. …and this will have canvas next to the wood. Will I glue this canvas down or not?….I’m not sure but I don’t think it’s supposed to be necessary. When all is ready, I will layer, brush on a couple of coats of encaustic medium, burn in and be set to go….I hope, crossing fingers.
he he he…just noticed that I can see myself taking the picture in the mirror of the old wardrobe holding painting supplies.
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Storage of encaustic panels
Storage………solving the problem!
As I keep making more of these encaustic panel paintings, I keep thinking of how to store them in the studio. And how will they be taken care of and stored by galleries. I got out my Uline catalog and looked and looked. Finally, I went to their site and just plugged in 13 x 13 x 3″ in the corrugated cardboard category and came up with what I thought would be a good solution. These are called “literary mailers” and resemble a good, heavy pizza box but with the 3″ depth. Taking advice from Joanne Mattera’s wonderful encaustic book, I have lined the boxes with small bubble wrap and put a piece of glassine on the top of the panel. I also printed out an image onto light weight poster sheet I had in the office…and a small image for the spine in case they are held in the gallery storage this way………voila! I think this will do to protect the panel and also make it easy for me or the gallery people to pull this work when not hanging on the wall.
I can also pack this up with extra bubble and enclose in a larger box for shipping when necessary.
Now….somewhere on the internet, or in a book, I found a statement an artist printed out to put on the back of their encaustic paintings…..hum, now where is it? I need something similar edited to fit my work. Hope I don’t have to just go and re-invent the wheel on this.
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Image Are We There Yet?
I almost forgot to take a picture of the encaustic collage I mentioned last night. I could change it a little…like scraping back into some of the map type. BUT, probably not as I prefer people to make their own stories up about the work.
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Are We There Yet?
Are We There Yet?
I think this is gonna have to be the title of the next encaustic. Who knows where these ideas come from? Anyway, I was working on the last two panels and applying collage elements Saturday when Curry took the last pictures. I still had to figure out the problems with the first ones. And I think I have….I applied too much heat with the apprehension that my elements wouldn’t stick down and not really having any experience with fusing. Now I know it works better to just lightly heat the surface, place elements, then apply a lot of medium, fuse lightly and just let it dry. Then you can scrape back when you want to see more of the collage pieces and leave the rest buried. Or that’s the way it’s working perfectly for the pieces I’m working on right now.
Back to the title stuff………..my daughter and her boyfriend came by to see her dad on Father’s Day and they looked around my studio. He’s a pilot…and is going to fly me out to PineTop AZ for my next show at the Joyous Lake Gallery in August. So he said, he’d luuuve to have a wax painting. (I did a really nice collage for him when he flew me to Santa Fe a couple of years ago.) Anyway, after they left it dawned on me that the collage element in the painting needed lots of work and I set to adding a few pieces here and there from some maps from a trip to France.
……….Lo and behold, I looked at it and suddenly the original element of a rice paper with threads running through it looked just like all those big glass windows in so many airport terminals……..heck some of my mark making could have been interpreted at runways (lets don’t get too carried away here) and then with the map that I suddenly realized pointed to the Salvaza airport,….You can see why that title just had to be.
Now if it wasn’t so dark I would take a picture……….tomorrow I will although I covered up a lot of the map elements and it may be hard to be except in person.
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Studio Pictures
Hard at work on a couple more encaustic panels……
Curry took a couple of pictures of me working on the next two panels.
On these pieces, I’ve already got a couple of layers of medium, lightly fused and cut up some collage pieces to lay on top. I put a larger piece on one panel and a smaller one on the other. Now I’m adding a lot more medium to get it all “glued” down.
Who knows what will happen but I’m gonna try laying in some oil paint and layering wax medium over it, fusing, and see what happens. I, also, think I’ll get out the graphite and see what happens. I noticed it’s kinda hard to “draw” anything on wax so I’ll just keep experimenting around and see what happens.
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Finished, I think!
Finished…I think!
I worked some more on the latest encaustic from yesterday….I think it’s working better for me, both design wise and surface wise. Before it needed a lot more wax build up. As I do that, the surface values and colors changes……..so just playing it by ear (no other way)..I applied more wax to the foreground areas, scraping and fusing.
As I was holding it up to get a better perspective I noticed out of my peripheral vision, the other 7 pieces hanging on the easel wall. This one looks like it could be the micro view of the first one. Weird, huh!
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It’s hot in here!
It’s hot in here!
Curry’s idea of hooking the heat gun up to the circuit in the utility room is working. So, for now I haven’t tried out the new torch….still gathering courage.
But, I did do some cleaning and re-arranging in the studio and got some wax down on the 8th panel. It’s still in early stages but heck….it’s getting hot. The temps on yahoo say 88 but feels like 94 with the humidity. But since my studio depends on just the a/c coming in through an open door and a fan, it’s hot enough to stop for the day. Maybe later if it cools off.
This is just a start……………….Maybe I was wanting to see some water and it translated into this beginning.
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More tools for the tool challenged!
More tools for the tool challenged!
Yep…..went out and got me a butane torch….while I was there in Lowe’s I also got a cheap window box fan and a good fire extinguisher.
I joined a new artist group….the International Encaustic Artists. And from information I’m reading, maybe considered I should trade my heat gun that draws so much power for a butane torch. Got me a little uneasy as this stuff is flammable and I’m not that much of a tool person. Don’t get me wrong, I luuuuve tools and art supplies but I’m a little uneasy about flames/heat shooting out of a torch. I was this way with the heat gun at first, too…took me about an hour to figure out this is a neat tool only to be confronted with the power problem. One highly recommended butane torch I discovered had to have a proprietary refill that I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to find locally and easily……..SO I bought a different one and found they have a kinda new model that says it’s “all the power and half the size”. That sounded good to me as I have Rheumatoid Arthritis and don’t want to hold anything too heavy for long.
Humm…now I gotta go clean out the studio and there is WAAAY too much stuff in there and it needs organizing again and I can then set all this stuff up. Guess I’ll have to get up early if I want to “vent” fumes out by way of an open window with a box fan. If so, that’s just the way it will have to be until I think of an alternative. My studio used to be a 20 x 20′ garage…but part of it is about 6 x 17′ art storage closet. I think now I need at least a 20 x 40′ studio ….and preferably with A/C, an exhaust fan and heavy duty electric breakers…..oh yeah, lots of light for my failing eyes
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