Linda Womack Inspires Me!

About a year ago I took an Oil PaintStick and Encaustic painting class in Kingston, NY at R&F Paints with a fabulous Artist and Teacher, Lisa Pressman. What an excellent experience that was to be inspired by and surrounded with such dedicated and talented people and...all the paintsticks and encaustic paint I could get my hands on! While there I purchased a great little book, "Embracing Encaustic", by Linda and William Womack. Wow, if you are curious about working with Encaustic Wax in your paintings, this is the perfect tool for you!!! Here are some of my 4in x 4in cradled boards painted with encaustic wax techniques from Linda's book:

 from 'Adding Texture' chapter

 from 'Incising Lines' chapter

 from 'Collage with Wax' chapter

and, this is my own creation taking the incising lines to the next level using Liquid Pencil potted water soluble graphite to fill the incised lines and give the surface of this painting a shiny depth only the graphite can give. :)

I just checked out Linda Womack's workshop website to see what she has going on. She has AWESOME online classes for all levels of encaustic wax painting! There is a fee for these classes (well worth it in my opinion), but you can get an inspirational tour of her studio for free by simply following this link: http://www.womackworkshops.com/about-the-teachers/.  Just watching her studio tour I was inspired to see her INSPIRATION JOURNAL (gonna have to start me one ASAP!!!) and the beautiful nature books she uses to gain insight into ideas from Mother Nature for shape / color / texture to go in to her paintings.

Thanks Linda for sharing your excellent tour! Look forward to seeing you in one of your internet classes soon.

Happy Fusing! :D    Tristina Dietz-Elmes

Finished R&F and the Encaustic Art Book!

 The perfect ending to a fantastic workshop visit to R&F Paints...I got to spend the day yesterday learning about ecaustic wax painting from Lisa Pressman and had a whole day to myself today in the workshop focusing on working with encaustic paints. One of the things that Lisa said about working with encaustic is that, "It's all about the heat." So true; I got to experiment with that today using both the butane torch and multi-temp heat gun. Here's the result of what I worked on yesterday and today:

My encaustic wax paint pallet. The wax is heated to about 200 degrees.

The brushes are kept on the hot plate or the bristles go hard in 30 seconds!



 The painting standing up is my finished 'tree bark' work. Others are in progress...

Detail of tree bark work showing black lines and pinholes filled with graphite.

The opaque areas will turn translucent as the wax cools and hardens.

Here's a piece in process. Will finish at home...

 I'm placing a photograph I've roughed up with sandpaper and coated with wax medium onto a large panel.

 Here's my peeling paint and photo painting in progress... Will finish at home.

Detail of painting with photo I took in Antibe, France a few years ago.

 It's so wonderful that R&F has available all the paint colors and tools for working with both oil paint pigment sticks and encaustic wax paints as part of their class/studio fee. I got to play with all the colors I wanted for the past 4 days! I met so many talented and inspiring people at the workshop (Dayna, Ian, Leslie, Serena, Kitty and Irene) as well as the folks who work at R&F (Richard, Pamela, Darren, Laura, Kelly, Kristin, Melissa, Sienna and a few others). I even bought 2 new Encaustic books and 5 DVD's, so will be giving you those reviews as I read/watch them!

 Today I also finished the 'Encaustic Art' book by Lissa Rankin. Loved the last several chapters discussing how different encaustic artists store, pack and ship their paintings as well as a discussion of how to educate galleries about encaustic if they are not familiar with the medium. I even read the last page with a short bio on Lissa and in the very last sentence it gave a web site address for sharing resources, education, how-tos, photos and creative inspiration for encaustic artists: www. EncausticandBeyond.com. This book was great to the very last sentence!!!

No Time for Reading, Time for DOING!

Hello Friends! Been having a blast at the Lisa Pressman fine art workshop to learn to use oil paint pigment sticks at R&F Paints in Kingston, NY. This is really NEW to me, since I have only ever worked with water soluable oil paints doing crafty things with my girls. Lisa has us working on LARGE sheets of paper and multiple canvas panels at once; both things that are a stretch for me. I came to the class to learn to use my WHOLE  BODY to paint with aaaand to get in touch with my PASSION and put it down with paint.

Lisa's style is very much it's OK to have fun and play. Boy, am I having FUN!  ;)

Here are a few pics from the class:

 R&F Paints factory, showroom, gallery and workshop.

This oil painting is done on thin textured rice paper. There is a piece of 140 lb watercolor paper under it to soak up excess paint oil that seeped thorough the rice paper (and there was a lot of it!).  Size about 26"x34".

It was a challange and very freeing at the same time to work BIG.

I also made another large paper painting of Lemons, but think after it dries I will have to cut it up into 3 or 4 smaller works. Hmmm, Lisa has gotten me thinking and it's a good thing!

Tristina :)