Sunday, June 21, 2009

practice, practice


"Moonlite", 12 x 9 encaustic panel

I had an unfinished encaustic panel from last week, I had been trying to figure out what to do with it after I added colored layers of wax. I started this morning by etching 2 figures but I was not happy with their faces so I took out the heat gun and melted everything off, then reapplied 2 more layers of colored wax and started over. Now that the panel was clean I felt the need to etch a landscape, something I know well, but even that was frustrating for me today. I could not capture a feeling of light and luminosity with the etching so then I decided to add some gold leaf and lotus flowers... they got muddy, and out came the heat gun, again! I kept trying to fuse the layers of newly applied wax but I kept over heating the layers and melting too much. I was so disgusted that now the flower additions were muddied up and I once again melted off what I didn't like. As I watched the wax melt off the bottom part of the painting I realized I liked what was happening with the details of the top blending and dripping into the blank space on the bottom... one thing lead to another and I am still not sure if this art piece works for me or not. All I know is I like the way it makes me feel.

3 comments:

  1. I like this piece a lot, and blasting it with a heat gun sounds like fun. It's been a while since I read my book on encaustics--I'd forgotten about the heat gun.

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  2. Hey Robin, I had not read your blog when I posted my comments on ASB. I'm glad to see I picked up on what you like about this one. This is a really nice piece. Great job. -Don

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  3. Robin, I LOVE this piece, the process sounds like sooooooo much work but WOW! I really like the results.
    Best, Alston

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