Collage Encaustic images
Who knows why these wouldn’t upload in the earlier post….more than likely something I did out of sequence.
And A 123, and a 123……who’d a guessed the title of this one?
I’m thinking to call this one….Old Town.
Related Images:
Buffing
Buffing the two encaustic collages. Ya’ know I think it takes longer for the pigments in the wax to dry enough to buff when you use oil paint for a colorant than when you just use the encaustic paints you buy. If it does or not, these two pieces with lots of paper collage elements took even longer to get dry enough to be able to buff up. It didn’t help that I kept adding more wax medium either. My friend Christy says she thinks it’s best to wait about 6-7 days anyway.
I luuuuuve the beautiful shine you get when you do buff them up….but my pieces are not the kind of encaustic works that have the very smooth, flat, mirror-like finishes. I didn’t plan on doing that since I like the real… and apparent texture whether or not it’s wax or acrylic.
One of these pieces has elements that are much thicker than the other elements….I was trying to figure out what I thought was the best way to handle this. Is there a best way, anyway? My way is the best way for MY work. As long as it doesn’t fall off in the floor anyway.
I still haven’t checked with the Dallas gallery owner to see if she’s going to want to see these in person………maybe I’ll wait until I get all of them done. What a “waffler” I am, huh! I may even head to Dallas tomorrow for a couple of days but I haven’t packed yet. The weather keeps going from sun to rain all within hours around here. Time for the sun to stay out for awhile.
Well heck….blogger won’t let me load the two images. Maybe I’ll close out this post and then post them later.
Related Images:
Studio Set up
Hum….gotta re-think the electronics in the studio for the encaustic. My hot air gun is knocking out the breaker on my electric strip and I have two electric strips going. I was being careful but, even on low speed, it did it again today. SO…I moved the gun work area over on the other side of the table and plugged directly into the wall there. SO far, so good, but I’m worried. I got DH to come in and tell me where he added new breakers for this garage when we made it into a room so long ago. HE ONLY ADDED ONE BREAKER……so the one on the wall over there is on the living room breaker and that knocks out some from the strips but I’ve got some thinking to do here. Maybe like call an electrician if I can get DH to let me. He’s one of those DYI people but he really has no time lately as he has to spend so much time over at his folk’s place doing things there. …and they have 200 acres to do on.
Well…what did I expect when I plug in a griddle, a pro warming tray/palette, 2 crockpots, a heat gun and don’t even mention the tacking iron.
I did get to work about 30 minutes (after heating wax for 45 minutes) before the storm warning came in saying it will be here soon. So time for lunch, huh!
Related Images:
Tripping the breakers!
Tripping the breakers! That’s what happened this morning as I heated up the wax and got ready to play around again with the encaustic. Guess I had one too many appliances plugged in so it tripped my electric strip. I guess I’ll just have to get a stronger strip wattage wise or spread some of this energy about some way in the studio.
My friend, Pat, came over the other day since we never did make contact as I came through Louisiana on my way home from MS. She wanted to see what I was doing with the wax… and see it in person.
We had a good time playing around in the studio Wednesday night and Thursday morning. I, also, took the first ones I decided were finished out and took slides and digitals.
Here are two more that I think I haven’t shown yet. The red one is all wax and oil pigment sticks and the other is a combination of wax, pigment stick and collage elements. When I got almost through working on it, it dawned on me that I was painting that tree line base that was showing from my space at the upper pavilion at colony. It’s not often I know what I’m painting until a long time later, if ever.
Related Images:
Waiting and the LULL
I’m still waiting for help on the studio lighting but in the meantime, I’ve got all the new encaustic painting stuff arranged on my 4 x 8 ft work table. My goodness, it looks like I’m going to cook in the studio with a griddle, the heating tray palette, and two crock-pots…where do I put the panels to paint on I might wonder….AND where will the big panels go when I finally ever get to doing some that are larger than 12 x 12″?
I just found an email from Creativity Portal with this article I need to take to heart and paste right out there in front of me all the time when I think I should be DOING something ALL the time. The LULL.
Related Images:
Accidents do happen, ya know!
X^#)&^%H^….has anyone else every dropped a fluorescent tube ? I just did a short while ago and am trying to cool off from the frustration. One of my studio fixtures started blinking before I went to Florida….so when I was out the other day at Lowe’s I picked up a couple of tubes of the daylight replacement tubes. Should I try to install them myself….I have in the past??? DH was over at his folk’s house doing what he has to do there every week and I wanted to see what I was doing in the studio……so, after waffling around for awhile about whether I would fall while installing I put two chairs up that were about the right distance apart.
Needless to say….IT WASN’T MY FAULT one of them fell out and shattered clear to the next county. And to think I’d spent the morning vacuuming around here in the house and now I may have tracked some of the glass shards on my flip-flops. I’m taking a break right now from gathering up the big pieces but I’m afraid that these tiny little pieces may show up FOREVER over and under every nook and cranny in the studio and beyond.
Just what I get for needing to get in the studio… but what can I do but whine and gripe about not having a helper around here some days
Related Images:
Goofy picture
Where to start, where to start. I really don’t know. If you want to go stay at a large resort outside Orlando (and have a large wallet)…go to GrandeLakes. Beautiful grounds, many places to eat, spa, golf, etc. and near the Disney attractions. It is outside the city so have a good map and a car. This photo was taken from the 18th floor and shows a lot of the way the back looked from that viewpoint.
Since I’d never been to a Disney theme park, Linda said we MUST go to the original park and off we went one day to make a day of it. It was fun and I can imagine how much fun it would be to a kid….of any age. We happened upon Goofy and someone to take a picture so here you are…….kinda a Goofy shot of Linda and me and our friend.
After three changes in the departure schedule we finally got back to Dallas last night and then on home today. I’m now unpacked with lots to do……….oops no mother’s day cards went out since I was out of town. The phone will be busy tomorrow.
Related Images:
Orlando
I had a great time visiting the Gee’s Bend quilt show on exhibit for the last week at the Orlando Art Museum. We watched the video where they interviewed/talked with the women who made many of the quilts. It’s amazing how they describe their process of creating and designing the quilts….different words for the same way most artists describe theirs, whether it’s painting, mixed media, sculpture, etc. Some worked with a plan or vision of what they wanted to do….and then strayed away from the original idea and went with what they had and felt would work. More than that, for these women was that they had limited materials available and used what they had so they wouldn’t waste anything. This is just a reminder that we should all do this more, for creativity’s sake as well as the sake of our planet.Beauty from the detrius that would be filling landfills.
Just as much or more fun was visiting with artist friends, Martha Marshall and Linda Stanley. Martha drove up past my hotel coming from Tampa to Orlando. We then went over to Linda’s house and visited her studio there. I envy all the outdoor “rooms” she has there around the pool and the Koi pool.
Bummer, I just looked and found I left the camera cord at home so I can’t download the pictures I took yesterday at the resort …….fantastic place here and our room is on the 18th floor looking out over all the pools meandering around between the two hotels here at GrandeLakes. The only bad thing is no free internet access in a high end hotel (and the more moderate and low lend in these companies have free)….go figure, huh! Guess I’ll have to pay for a day here and there to check email and what’s going on out there. Too bad I don’t play golf and I’m a wimp at the spa workout stuff. If I get really bored, I can go work out over at the Ritz spa…..or maybe better just put on my walking shoes and walk up and down stairs, and around the grounds which would be more interesting than a treadmill or elliptical machine.
A big storm blew through yesterday afternoon here…and maybe another tonight. Orlando needs the rain though and it’s not storming all the time…in fact bright sunshine right now so no complaint from me. Linda and I will probably take in a theme park tomorrow since I’ve never been to one. You can’t come to Orlando without thinking of theme parks…especially if you’ve never been.There aren’t a lot of art galleries here….maybe that’s a good thing. Sometimes all I do is art at home in the studio and visiting art galleries and museums when I travel. There are other things in the world besides art. I tend to forget that some time.
Related Images:
More encaustics
More encaustic paintings. It’s been hectic getting being gone for a week, coming back, unloading and doing all the stuff around here before heading for Orlando in a couple of days. I just put the first encaustic up and now have a couple of more to put up from my first efforts. I came home with 7 panels in various states of finish. I think only one needs a little more…and one other is finished, maybe or maybe not…still thinking on that one.
I still have a lot to learn manipulating this medium……well heck, I could learn more every day about the mediums I use all the time. But still there is something to learn when it comes to putting something hot and fluid on a brush and it’s already cold and thick by the time you quickly move the brush to the panel. No hesitation allowed. That’s good….hesitation is a killer.Confidence is right, even if it’s wrong.
At colony, my intent was to try out several methods/styles of painting with wax….different grounds, or adding collage elements to some and not to others, etc. I used the Evans Holy Grail for the first layer on the first one. It dried looking somewhat like a couple of layers of gesso…although you can’t use acrylic gesso under encaustic since it is not absorbent and your painting could pop or slide off later. So this gives you a nice white surface to work on. I, also, tried gluing down rice paper with PVA…..that went on well and stayed down through out the process. The part that didn’t stay down was some of the collaged papers. I’ll have to work on that piece again. It is a challenge to get collage to stay stuck since when you re-heat the surface, it gets re-heated and can come up again. The other pieces were just to paint/melt/spread the medium on the panels ( a couple of thin layers) and then start painting. Encaustic isn’t affected by the wood panel surface the way straight oils might be.
Well gotta get back to packing for Orlando. I’ll be meeting up with artist friends there at least a time or two ………..Linda Stanley and Martha Marshall. We’re going to have a fabulous time Sunday going to the Gee’s Bend show at the Orlando museum before it closes.
Related Images:
Waxes and camp update
The connection is sporadic here at camp. So there will be few words. I’ve got wax going pretty good on 6 of the 12×12″ panels now. It’s hard to type sitting in the SUV out in front of the dining hall with the laptop on my knee. (not much of a typist anyway.) I think this is going to be a good medium for my purposes but there is a learning curve for just about everything I’m used to doing.
Here’s the image of the first one….I started it at home the day before I came and finished it yesterday.
More later…happy hour and dinner is calling.
Related Images:
Jumping in off the deep end!
Jumping in off the deep end! Time for my Mississippi Art Colony retreat again. I leave early in the morning for about a 4 1/2- 5 hour drive to the camp near Utica, MS.
There will be no “comfortable” work to fall back on at this colony. I’m leaving all my canvases and acrylics at home. I’m only taking the encaustic waxes, and oils since you can extend colors with oil when you want/need to. I’m taking the 12 x 12″ Ampersand panels to work on and a few pieces of watercolor paper to prepare for oils if I get the notion to work with “just paint”. However, that won’t be as usual either since these oils paints are OLD and I have not used them much at all in 20 years. One of the reasons I use acrylic is because I need to layer and layering in oils is a long time process. Heck, while they dry, I forget where I was going. I am taking some collage papers as that was one of the two main reasons for wanting to try this medium. You can just embed them in the wax……the other reason, of course, is the wonderful, sensuous surface of the wax. Quality of surface is one of my real loves in painting.
I won’t even be able to work in my same spot at the camp either. Since I’m using the waxes I need to be outside to keep the fumes at bay. I should be able to pick up a few tips here and there as several colony people use encaustic. Heaven knows I need tips.
This is a good time for this since I don’t have any obligations to fulfill right now. I need to do something different, experiment a little, get out of my comfort zone………and now I’ll have 4 straight days with nothing else to do but paint and get together with good art buddies.
Related Images:
A Good Day
Overall…………a good day Saturday! After getting up at 5 am and going over to pick up a friend, we drove to Dallas for an art seminar and DADA art walk. …hum maybe drive in Dallas is a better word.
We found the Latino Cultural Center without any problem at all, registered and waited for the seminar to begin. (while looking for the previous link, I found this one that really shows off the building outside…at the Dallas Arts Revue site… All the fees went to a good cause (scholarship for an art student). The seminar was a mixed bag…I didn’t get much from it personally as an artist. I know they were trying but some of the hierarchy in the art world just don’t “get it” as far as the perspective of the average (is there such) artist working out there today. Most of them think we’re all trying to beat down their doors to show our work and that we don’t have an inkling of what they do and how they schedule. Only thing is, we do…or I say WE…..I do and so does the artist in the audience who asked the question that I can’t remember exactly now. He wanted to know how we could better facilitate networking and more interaction among all the different levels/strata (museum administrator/curator, gallery dealer,critic, artist) or whatever in the art world there in Dallas and north TX. (This was my take on the question anyway). Shame on me for being shy about speaking out so I respect that he did so. Anyway, the curator/museum administration/critic types who were there on the panel….just didn’t GET the question. There would be none of any of it without the artist. Hence the problem.
Now, my take on this is that we all need to be out there networking our rears off ALL the time….but how do we do this and also have the private, introspective time we need to create our work? You just can’t do it all. In a perfect world, someone would be there to do some of this stuff….and some artists think they need to find someone to SELL them or do it for them. It just is not gonna happen people. You have to do it yourself. The internet is certainly a boon to the artist trying to do as much as they can in whatever time they have to spare. It has been for me anyway.
Hum……..sorry about that! I got off on this tangent and forgot about what a great day I had running around to a few galleries, visiting with my own gallery, Norwood-Flynn Gallery, have a great dinner with friends and daughter…………but a long day that ended past midnight. NOTE:….when I really want to look at the art, I’ll have to go back and take more time to see less….no way can you really look during an art walk as much fun as it is.
On the rest of the good for the day…………an email when I got home that a painting at Joyous Lake Gallery had sold within 24 hours of being hung. Thanks to Gwen for inviting me to show at her gallery in Pinetop.
Recent Comments