Encaustics, Part One

I was a part of a wonderful Mixed Media Encaustic workshop taught by Judy Wise at Valley Ridge Art Studio in Wisconsin last weekend. It was wonderful fun to walk away from school at the end of high school band.... I was humming "leaving on a jet plane" the whole way out of the building! LOL!

I flew on the little plane out of Manistee over to Milwaukee. It's wonderful, and our airport is so pretty and restful, since we have to get there so much ahead of the plane now. Well, I got to Milwaukee & picked up my car and started driving West. I had seen several little things along the way before that I thought might be fun to stop and take a look at - so I did. Sadly, they weren't open, and I didn't take pics. On my next trip, I will do this and blog it for you!

But.. I got to Life O'Reilly Farm where I was staying, got into my wonderfully adorable room, and then had a fun evening of laughter and talk around the kitchen table with three other women taking the workshop and Jean, the owner.

The next morning, after a great breakfast, it was off to Valley Ridge, and my class. See some of the progress of what I made. I will show final pics in another post. I sure did LOVE encuastic work -- I knew as soon as I started with it that I was going to have to get a griddle or fry pan and beeswax and pigments and damar resin and and and for yet another medium. But... it's so fun, such a cool look, and my head spins with possibilities and "what ifs..."

Okay, enough blah, blah, blah -- here are the pics!

This is where it started - painted board black, collaged these two "paper dolls" as focal point images.

Decided where to place them, then glued them down on their respective boards - just showing my little guy here.


After much painting, more collaging, and general play, this is how they look - the sheen that you see in the pics is from the wax! Oooh, how I did love the encaustic medium! Fun to work with, and it was easy to understand. Well, at least for me it seemed easy. I'd love to continue to work in it more now. And a close up of one of the transfers I did on the wax, and I liked how I was able to distort the "3" just a little by making the wax a little too hot. Um, yes, I planned it that way! But...didn't it turn out cool? I think I'd like to try doing transfers and intentionally distorting them, now that I understand how that works. Well, more encaustic later - it's almost sunrise & I think I have a long "to do" list today!