Encaustic Experiments

So the time came to put the wax on the small crayfish painting I did earlier.  I am actually a little hesitant to post this, because I am not really that happy with this one and not very comfortable with broadcasting my mistakes. But c'est la vie! You live, you learn, and you blog about it.

As I mentioned before, this is an ancient technique called Encaustic. Around the time of the Roman Empire, the Egyptians used encaustic to create amazing likenesses of the deceased. These were placed on top of the wrapped heads of mummies and are amazingly realistic. Click here for an example.

I am using encaustic a bit differently than the Egyptians did. Instead of making workable "paint" by mixing pigment into the wax like they did, I am using the wax almost like a transparent surface to draw over top of an existing painting. I've outlined my process below. Feel free to give it a try!

Click to see larger

Yellow beeswax melting on the George Forman (with the griddle style attachment) - Brilliant idea I saw on YouTube

Brushing on the beeswax. This is when I got carried away and put way too much wax over the crayfish painting. Next time I'll be more conservative with it!

Next I etched into the wax while it was still soft

Covering the wax with thinned down oil paint. I actually went back and used a more brown color as you can see in the final result.  When you wipe off this coating of paint, it only sticks in the etched parts that I scratched out in the previous step.

Final result... I think? Might go back and do more later. Or collage into it? I dunno.

As I said, I'm not completely satisfied with this one. Its like the first pancake off the frying pan - you can always count on it's imperfection. If I do this crayfish again (which I might), I think I'll paint more of an "pond bottom" environment for the crayfish to inhabit, and will brush much less wax over the star of the piece. Practice makes perfect, right? Expect to see a lot more (and hopefully better!) encaustics in the future!