From the studio

Here's another 8" X 8" little gem using the plaster and a more brilliant white background with black and mars teracotta theme. It actually came about because I wasn't happy with my original design so I began to scrape back certain areas and voila, I liked the reduction. As you can see I'm enjoying using the cross hatch motifs and I know I'll be using the reduction of black squares. I've got to be ordering more wax pellets for mixing up new medium in the near future and anticipate ordering in bulk.

The last 2 days have found me outside planting spring-time plants from the nursery. Honestly the weather has been too cold and rainy here until the last week and now I'm worried we'll go from cold to hot like the rest of the nation. But I did my planting and transplanting with just a few left to go tomorrow and then I'll be done. And finished before the onslaught of the mosquito pestilence that happens here every year. Still in all, even with the aches and pains of overtaxing muscles I'm enjoying being outside. It feels like I am finally breathing full lung-fulls of breath.

And another one

Here's another one which I did recently and like. Plaster is underneath to create that interesting texture and then I build up from there. Not the typical use of encaustic where you have layers hiding layers, hiding layers but I think there is room in the industry for all kinds of ways to use the medium.

Haven't named this one yet. Also 8"x8" on birch luan. I do like the image element on the upper half of the painting and want to reuse something like this in a larger painting so stay tuned.

The weather is stubbornly cloudy, a cool 59 degrees and has been this last week. Not typically warming weather we see by now but I am thankful it's not the tremendous heat of the mid and east coasts. Global warming showing it's throat. I know lots of people who don't believe it. Here it just seems to be stormier and cooler than normal. My new English laurels are barely getting green. Anyway, out to get all of our new plants into the ground this weekend.

Here's some work

So here is some new work coming out of my encaustic studio. Over plaster with the theme of simple connections and unity of three's.

Our Beginning Encaustic Class was held at The Picture Attic this Saturday and was filled, and we even had a small waiting list. We had a lot of fun and did some really amazing things with wax. We used those new "Hot Wax Sticks" from Enkaustico's and found them to be very small but very intensely colored. In future classes I'll be diluting them with some medium so they will go further.

We are planning a "Return for the Burn" Encaustic Class later in the summer and I'll announce it here as well as at The Picture Attic website. It will be an Intermediate Class and along with burning papers, fabrics, shellac and we'll be dying papers with tea, coffee and watercolors and burning them too. We'll focus on metallics - not just wax but foils, pigments and joss papers and how you can include those in your designs. We'll also go over fabric and paper hangings as well as rub on and sticky texts. So keep checking here for the exact dates.