52 Weeks of Art: Week 35

Week 35: Encaustic

Welcome to week 35 of 52 weeks of art! What are we doing this week?

          This week we did some encaustic painting. What is encaustic? It's hot wax painting. It's a mix of beeswax, resin, and pigment that gets used as paint. You can buy some already made encaustic paint, or you can make your own. Since encaustic paint isn't really budget friendly, we decided to make our own paint. Making your own is pretty simple. You just need beeswax, damar resin, and pigment.

    Here's the beeswax. It came in little pellets. I like the little pellets, they melt quickly.

     Here's the damar resin. It comes in these crystals. It's a tree resin, so it's kind of on the sticky side. The crystals are added to the melted beeswax. It's used as a wax hardener. I'm sure it serves some other purposes, I'm no encasutic painting expert.

    I didn't get any pictures of the whole batch of "paint" I made. I melted the wax and resin in a larger container and portioned it out into smaller containers to color. I added some pigment to small portions and mixed it up with some popsicle sticks. 

    Now for the painting part. Wow. This was not easy. They make some fancy tools for painting. We did not get these fancy tools. The painting tools are heated. They probably would have made painting so much easier. Trying to paint with hot wax on a cold surface doesn't work out so great. The wax hardens almost instantly. So, the solution was to put our canvas - okay, it was just a block of MDF - right on the griddle. After the block heated up it was much easier to paint. It wasn't easy, but it was easier.

    Here's a close up of the painting I made. I like the sort of 3D effect the wax creates. 

     And here's the final product. I'm not so sure this photo turned out so great, but it is what it is.

On to rating encaustic...

     Just a reminder on the criteria for rating each medium.

Ease of use: How easy was this medium to use.

Affordability: How affordable supplies are for each medium.

Accessibility: How easily accessible supplies are for each medium. Example, are specific tools required that are hard to find?

Fun to Use: How much enjoyment I got out of using this medium

     So, for encaustic, my rating is: 12

Ease of use: 3

 Hot wax isn't the easiest of mediums to use. It got easier the more I used it, but there is definitely a learning curve.

Affordability: 1

  Buying all the supplies for this medium was not cheap. I spent a little over $80 for supplies. That was the cheaper option of making my own paint, too. Yeah, not really affordable.

Accessibility: 4

     Buying the supplies - beeswax, resin, and pigment - was pretty easy. I just purchased everything online and had no problems finding what I needed.

Fun to Use: 4

Before we decided to put the MDF right on the griddle I thought there was no way I was ever going to finish this. AFTER putting the MDF on the griddle, I think I really enjoyed this medium. I really think this is something I'm going to try again. Maybe I'll even invest in getting those fancy tools I was talking about.

     If you would like to go on this epic art adventure with me, next week we will be doing...

     If you choose to follow along, please post your work using #52weekartadventure!