Excavating Encaustic, workshop with Laura Moriarty

It's been enlightening for me to see new ways of using this incredibly addictive medium with much more to still cover in this week long workshop and I just wanted to share a few of these new encaustic techniques.

Excavating with layers, our first project:

We built up many layers of color in order to then "excavate" by using a variety of carving and printmaking tools. We cut and scraped and carved to expose different levels of layered wax. I also added lines of inlay in yellow and gray to make the pattern more interesting.

What is so different for me is not having a representational idea but rather to only focus on the qualities of the wax and the experience of simply exploring it.

Early stages of excavating -

There are only 4 of us in the workshop, seen below after the first day.

Tomorrow we will be using the "artifacts" that we created out of wax and I plan on posting once I learn and understand this next technique.