This month, I attended a workshop at the New Mexico Art League on Encaustic Collage and Mixed Media led by Carolyn Berry. It was an intensive 3 day workshop with a broad overview of encaustic painting and collage techniques and "hands on" experience that produced five finished pieces and a sample board for me. I had first experienced encaustic painting in April, 2012 at the Encaustic Art Institute in Cerillos, NM. This was my first finished encaustic painting from that workshop:
You can see some beautiful works of art on the Encaustic Art Institute's Blog here.
Carolyn Berry, our instructor, provided us with the necessary instruction and supplies to learn a broad range of encaustic painting techniques,
Carolyn Berry applying shellac to be heated with a torch for a "spidering" effect
Here the instructor demonstrates the use of fire (butane torch) to create interesting "spidering' effects on an encaustic painitng:
Encaustic painting requires a lot of sophisticated and unique equipment. The technique requires a fairly large work space, sufficient ventilation, adequate electrical voltage and outlets, and an expensive supply of the medium of beeswax and damar resin, inks, hot plates, heat guns, brushes and specialized medium boards, collage materials and much more. I go to the workshops to do encaustic because I don't have such equipment and supplies or space at my home. Carolyn Berry provided a supply of everything we needed. Here are some of the supplies she provided:
Encaustic is a 3,000 year old technique of using hot wax tinted with pure pigment color to paint.
Here are some of the student works created in the workshop:
Encaustic painting lends itself well to mixed media collage and three dimensional art. Here are some other examples of student work created in this workshop:
I created a sample board to try different techniques and media:
Then I created five pieces using collage of clip art, printed napkins, and my own photographs and poetry:
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