What is Oil Encaustic?
Oil Encaustic painting is the use of beeswax medium and oil pigments. The medium is made from damar crystal and beeswax. The damar crystal makes the wax stronger and also gives it a higher melting point. Without the damar the wax is brittle and has a tendency to break. Pigments can be added to the wax with either oil paints or natural pigment powder. The arrays of colors available are as limited as the oil paint world. If you use the pigment powders wear a mask, gloves and have good ventilation. They are very toxic.
The possibilities with the encaustic medium are endless. This is because you can fuse other paintings, papers, fabrics, photos, twigs, moss, shells, feathers, metals and pennies into the work. Really, anything you can think of, you could possibly incorporate it into the medium. Encaustic paintings can be built up in layers. You can be creative and carve into the wax and fill it with another color. It can be scrapped, scratched, rubbed and polished to get different effects.
Being a realist, it was a shock to my system to work in wax, because I couldn’t “control” it! I was forced to go with the flow. Forget about exacting lines especially if you want to paint a horse! For me encaustic painting is very exciting to work with. I have been attracted to texture in my works of art trying pumice stone and different papers. Making coarse and smooth surfaces and incorporating abstract. Painting with encaustics allows me to do all of that.
I make my own pigment bars with professional grade oil paints, damar crystals and beeswax. Once my bars of color are created, I warm up my heating tray and select my brushes. When choosing brushes, my motto is the cheaper the better. They will be dipped into molten wax, and when they dry, they are hard and stiff until next time. The heating tray is like my watercolor pallet. Melting and blending colors before I apply them to the painting. The molten wax dries very quickly almost instantly on the surface of the painting. So a heat gun or a small blow torch is used to fuse each layer to the one before. Otherwise the layers can flake off! It is during the fusing that the painting seems most alive, for it shifts, melts together and the pigments push each other around. It forces you to go with the flow of the painting
One of my favorite paintings is called “Race to the River.” This painting is BIG 32” x 80” x 2” painted onto a hollow panel. The work is created from oil encaustics and tar paper. I created the painting by using a blow torch to melt the wax, and while it was molten, I lifted the board to create flow patterns. Time and time again, I worked in small areas to create the clouds billowing of the mountains and the energy from the horses.
Oil Encaustic painting is the use of beeswax medium and oil pigments. The medium is made from damar crystal and beeswax. The damar crystal makes the wax stronger and also gives it a higher melting point. Without the damar the wax is brittle and has a tendency to break. Pigments can be added to the wax with either oil paints or natural pigment powder. The arrays of colors available are as limited as the oil paint world. If you use the pigment powders wear a mask, gloves and have good ventilation. They are very toxic.
The possibilities with the encaustic medium are endless. This is because you can fuse other paintings, papers, fabrics, photos, twigs, moss, shells, feathers, metals and pennies into the work. Really, anything you can think of, you could possibly incorporate it into the medium. Encaustic paintings can be built up in layers. You can be creative and carve into the wax and fill it with another color. It can be scrapped, scratched, rubbed and polished to get different effects.
Being a realist, it was a shock to my system to work in wax, because I couldn’t “control” it! I was forced to go with the flow. Forget about exacting lines especially if you want to paint a horse! For me encaustic painting is very exciting to work with. I have been attracted to texture in my works of art trying pumice stone and different papers. Making coarse and smooth surfaces and incorporating abstract. Painting with encaustics allows me to do all of that.
I make my own pigment bars with professional grade oil paints, damar crystals and beeswax. Once my bars of color are created, I warm up my heating tray and select my brushes. When choosing brushes, my motto is the cheaper the better. They will be dipped into molten wax, and when they dry, they are hard and stiff until next time. The heating tray is like my watercolor pallet. Melting and blending colors before I apply them to the painting. The molten wax dries very quickly almost instantly on the surface of the painting. So a heat gun or a small blow torch is used to fuse each layer to the one before. Otherwise the layers can flake off! It is during the fusing that the painting seems most alive, for it shifts, melts together and the pigments push each other around. It forces you to go with the flow of the painting
One of my favorite paintings is called “Race to the River.” This painting is BIG 32” x 80” x 2” painted onto a hollow panel. The work is created from oil encaustics and tar paper. I created the painting by using a blow torch to melt the wax, and while it was molten, I lifted the board to create flow patterns. Time and time again, I worked in small areas to create the clouds billowing of the mountains and the energy from the horses.