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.