DIY Art Adding Dimension Using Encaustic

by Adele Kurtz

$50

6 Hours

Medium

I've been an artist of all sorts my whole life with a hodgepodge of techniques and interests: photography, painting, sculpture, paper-making... Like many of you, I've collected a mass of raw material in various levels of completion, bulging out the seams of my studio.

Lately I've been combining my works into collage and mixed-media pieces.

Learning ENCAUSTIC Techniques has given my work more permanence, dimension and refinement. Encaustic uses a waxy resin to give you a new medium to fix and mold your photographs, paper-works and to add limitless embellishments -- such as nature objects, glass, beads, coins, etc..

I'd like to show you examples of the elements and materials I used while I was working recently, with final results as to how I chose to hang them together -- to inspire you to new dimensions.

Hope you enjoy the process!

I started with 6 x 6 wood panels and encaustic pellets that are made of wax and resin.

I melt wax pastels and paint into the wax resin to get color and textures...

You can go online for these materials and more specific instructions if you are so inspired.

Some of the materials I use: Heat gun, hot plate, crock pot, little cans for melting pastels and paint... brushes and scraping tools. I also use an iron to melt and flatten.

The waxy resin can be as flat or as dimensional as you wish.

In the background is a pastel I coated with the resin wax... I'll save it for another project.

In the foreground are some nature elements and handmade papers I coated that are inspiring my direction today...

Here is a finished group of encaustic boxes/panels. For these effects, I melted wax pastels and other paints over waxed paper that I pressed over the wooden panels, front and back. Middle one has experimental techniques where I flamed metallics over my gas stove. Sprayed metallic enamel onto the altered panel & toasted the whole thing over a flame. It bubbled and created especially cool textures ...

Artists get a little nuts sometimes...

Another example of an encaustic box, done on another day, with nature elements melted into homemade papers and the wax-resin: sand, dried leaves, wooden pieces...

Today's inspiration piece: A resin wall hanging that is 3-D. I want to do a piece that jumps out at you.

I have lots of remnant goodies in my studio and around my home to work with... collected items of nature... half-finished sculptures... scraps of metal, cloth, handmade paper... and the panel boxes I made...

I took one of my flamed boxes, "backside" had nice details. I used tacking putty to hold a wood turtle I had stained with copper paint and a small twisted branch, lightly sanded and stained with pearlescent grey + copper. Chose copper because it tied into the flamed metal on the panel/box.

Here's what I did with the other two panel boxes.

I chose to mount photographs taken by my very talented daughter (the model for the pastel shown earlier) over the panel boxes and to display stones on the ledges that mimic colors & patterns in the photos.

When Jessi was visiting, we had coated her 4 x 5 photos in 2-step epoxy, mounted on black plastic board.

I like the play of shadows against the wall -- makes it more interesting than the 4 x 5 pictures looked when they were just hung flat against the wall.

DIMENSIONALITY literally added greater depth to this display too.

Then, for fun, I added a simple snapshot of me getting a smooch from a dolphin.

The dolphin's head mimics the shapes of the stones...

So, yes, this assemblage now has a definite porpoise!