There’s something to be said for positive thinking. I’m ordinarily a positive person and look for the bright side of just about anything. That said, I gotta say, something wonderful must be going to happen for me to make up for the big mess I’m making with these encaustic paints.

You should see the effect I’m getting….not gorgeous I can tell you. It might look a little like marbleizing. Hum…the beeswax smells good though. Nowhere did I see anything in my researching about how to lay down a nice thin even coat of wax. Maybe that’s the problem…so to heck with it. I just decided to keep adding a little more and a little more. My first idea was to melt plain wax on the hot palette and just dip the front of the panel in it and smooth it out. Needless to say, that didn’t work as planned. It might be a good plan but maybe I got in a hurry and the wax wasn’t fluid enough all over the palette yet.

Then I got out some old oil paint sticks and made some marks. Now wonder why that old oil stick looked like black but was really dark blue! On top of the unbleached beeswax it looks like the color pineapple yellow and blue. This will take a little (did I say little??) getting used to.Wax either dries before you can get it from the hot palette to the panel or turns into marbelizing when you heat it up with the little iron or hot gun. I may have to paint with the hot gun in one hand and the brush of wax pigment in the other. Maybe you’re supposed to scrape it all down as you apply it to smooth it out? I don’t know but it’s a work in progress, that’s for sure.

Oh yeah….I think I’ll title the diptych………The Red Thread. Title compliments of a suggestion from my friend, Margot Comstock.

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