Sunday, November 14, 2010

Go with the Flow

Eucalyptus, 6" x 6" mixed media collage, is this finished?


This morning I decided to transfer a black and white landscape image onto the green tinted colored panel that I prepared last night. It was a disaster! I am still feeling so naive and under educated when it comes to encaustic painting but the best way for me to learn is by trial and error hopefully with an occasional success. I melted off the transfer because it just wasn't going to work the way I had envisioned and then I started adding other colors only to feel like I ended up with mush. I melted off wax once again and sat in front of my panel wondering why nothing was working for me today. Then I started playing with my heated palette and pushing the panel onto it not caring what happened because I had already failed twice... I had the wax dripping off, then tried building it up more, then melted it down again, and did this until I felt comfortable with the color remaining on the panel. When I was finished, it looked like the color of eucalyptus. I had dried eucalyptus in the house, and the next thing I knew, I was dunking the leaves into my wax medium and adhering it to the colored panel. The DVD I watched yesterday ("Encaustic with a Textile Sensibility" by Daniella Woolf) had included a section on collage and I learned that a variety of organic materials were preserved in the wax.

I can't decide if I need to add other elements to this (silver markings, depth in pigment) because collage with wax is so new to me. I keep thinking about my original idea which was to incorporate pencil drawing into this panel, guess I got side tracked. I can still smell the eucalyptus, I wonder how long the scent will last.

9 comments:

  1. This is what I call a success! It looks really nice and its a wonderful resolution to a challenging day of creating. I love that you kept pushing through and kept trying different things. Isn't it fun to explore?

    -Don

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  2. thanks Don but you know, I woke up and saw your comment, then reviewed what I wrote, and now I don't know if this is working for me anymore! I may have to mess around with it some more, the worst that happens is I ruin it but learned from the whole experience.

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  3. I agree with Don, it's a success. I also agree with him about your tenacity.I find that often my best creations come from failed starts. Good job!

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  4. sometimes I change and ruin artwork that really would have been best left alone, just my eyes needed some refreshing. I hope I can leave this alone and remember my process instead of the end result.

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  5. I agree with Don and Eva, it's a success. I think we are our own worst critique sometimes. BUT you have to be happy with what you do.So follow your heart.

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  6. thank you, Alston, how have you been?

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  7. I think you had fun and this will lead to something exciting.

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  8. Persistence is the key to successful work and you have demonstrated it here. This is lovely and I'm sure it will motivate you to find even more ways of working organically with collage.

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  9. thanks for all the support with your comments Eva and Pam. The bottom line for me is tonight I am hired to demonstrate encaustic technique to a local art association and although I have done plenty of watercolor demos, this is the first time I am going to paint with wax for an audience. I think I have to stick with what I know (encaustic image transfers) at the demo and doodle with the collage elements in wax when I can afford to continue to mess up! (I am tempted to play around with the eucalyptus some more though ....)

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