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!!!