Melissa Hall Art & Photography

2012-02-09T08:52:00.000-08:00

These are some lessons learned from the recent experiences:

Thanks to Linda for this reminder - If you are working on cradled boards, it's a good idea to go ahead and install your hanging hardware so you won't have to risk damaging your piece after you've finished.
Don't use a swiffer to buff an encaustic piece. Trust me. Eh gad the lint!
I bought a bunch of relatively cheap, flat pieces of birch board for workshops. With a decent amount of heat, these will warp like crazy. Lesson learned.
Wait until everything has cooled before you try to do anything on top of an image transfer. I destroyed my transfer brushing medium over it becasue the subsequent layer was still a little warm.

Asheville Workshop

2012-02-08T08:03:00.000-08:00

February has started off with a bang creatively. I’ll apologize up front because most of what I will be posting is purely encaustic painting and techniques instead of solely being combined with photography but somewhere down the road the information will used in my photography works I’m sure.

This past weekend I attended a workshop in Asheville NC with Patricia Baldwin Seggebruch. There were so many new ideas and products to try!

Trish demonstrating a TAP transfer onto wax

We applied spackling paste and asphalt tar to wood boards or encasuticbords. The spackling paste had to totally dry before you continued but once the tar had dried about 80% you could take a wire brush to it and knock it back a bit. On a white encasuticbord you would get this nice caramel color along with the deep black of the tar. I had seen tar applied to an encaustic piece in pictures and thought I wouldn't be interested in it. Once again I have learned the lesson that pictures of encaustic works are pale comparisons to the real thing. Granted, there's one thing you need to keep in mind, I'm sure asphalt tar is not an archival product so be forewarned!

We also applied a product called "wood icing" that looked like a mixture of plaster and wood glue. This product could go on top of or underneath wax layers. I really liked this substance. Once dry, it took color from pastels or pigment powders wonderfully. In the photo above, the blue and yellow board has wood icing applied to the top. Here is a piece I finished very simply with encaustic medium, wood icing along the side, and some aqua pearl-ex pigment powder brushed across the dried wood icing to match the color in the photo beneath.

We had a workstation set up with various papers, pan pastels, oil sticks, oil paint, and stencils.

Art can sure be messy!

This was my first experience using a propane torch. Boy howdee, that is a fun instrument! I think my favorite new activity is burning shellac on an encasutic surface. We used paper towels to dab on an amber shellac. Alcohol inks or pearl-ex pigments could be mixed into the shellac for various effects.

Trish applying shellac

Shellac applied and mixed with a dark purple alcohol ink

After burning the shellac and ink

My travel buddy and fellow workshop ho, Linda Blumer discovered the truth that shellac burning made ugly pieces quite interesting.

Linda's and my workspace toward the end of the workshop's 2nd day

Liz and Linda removing painters tape from Liz's gorgeous piece

Here's an example of a shellac burn with red alcohol ink. By the way, this is the first image transfer I've ever done successfully. I'll do more posts on that process later. I started this piece on white encausticbord with clear medium brushed on. I smeared black pan pastel over that to add texture. Using a stencil, I added the red arch on the top using red oil paint. Obviously there wasn't time for that to dry so when I brushed on the next layer of medium, it smeared but in an interesting way. I applied the crow image transfer from a copy of one my images. The crackle texture is a burn of mixed amber shellac and red alcohol ink.

I also had a good time mixing shellac and pearl-ex powdered pigments.

Here are two pieces I made using a smaller amount of blue pearl-ex powdered pigments mixed with shellac.

The board on the left is the blue and yellow wood icing piece from the second picture in this post. I also applied the neon yellow paint on the bottom, then some weak black paint on top of that. I scraped it back for texture, then did the shellac burn.

The colors of encaustic paint supplied for us at the workshop were definitely not colors I would normally use and this turned out to be quite fun. There was a super saturated pink that almost everyone was avoiding like the plague. I finally decided to see what was the ugliest possible piece I could make just to see what I could do with it. I applied paint with abandon, used stencils, and then to top it off, I added a shellac burn with tons of gold metallic pearl-ex pigment mixed in. I present to you "Hooker Barbie"!

Plaster and wood glue burned with a torch

One of the last demonstrations Trish did was burning wood glue. This wasn't my personal favorite activity but you could get a neat crusty texture. If you put on the glue too thickly though, you ended up with a nasty marshmallow glob.

Here's one last piece from the workshop. It started out as an 8x10 birch board. I added plaster and burned that with a torch. The dark color comes from burning the board. The strip across the top is a collaged piece of paper. There's a shellac burn on the left side and the copper color comes from bookbinder's foil.

By the way, I got my first encaustic piece into a juried show! The Blue Morpho butterfly piece in previous posts will be in the 2012 Glories of the Garden show at University of Kentucky’s Dorotha Smith Oatts Visitor Center Monday, February 13- Sunday, March 4. My digital piece Haunted will also be on exhibit at the Kentucky Artisan Center at Berea’s exhibit “About Face: Works Inspired by the Human Face" March 3 - Aug. 19, 2012.

Torso Project - Counting Crows

2012-01-03T13:57:00.000-08:00

Background Story:

A few years ago I sculpted and fired a torso out of stoneware based upon one of my photographs. In October 2011, my good friend (and amazing artist) Teresa showed me how to make a plaster mold of the front half of the sculpture. Using the plaster model, we made a polymer clay version of the torso. I have had it in my mind to try and replicate what I already do digitally but in a 3D way.

Stoneware torso being prepped for mold making

So here’s what the plain polymer clay piece looks like: (It is approximately 16” tall and 9” wide at the shoulders.)

Polymer clay torso

There’s a risk with this project. Polymer clay is basically plastic and wax likes to stick to absorbent surfaces so this may not work, but you’ll never know you’ve crossed the line until you cross it. I am using unbleached beeswax since it is more malleable than encaustic medium or chemically treated beeswax.

First I tried printing my digital images onto tissue paper that I had coated in a digital ground. The print was lovely but alas, collaging paper (even small pieces) to a 3D substrate did not work. I ended up with a goopy mess. After some frustration, I remembered that I had inkjet printable silk. Viola! That formed ever so easily to the torso and stayed on easily once the wax was applied. The wax went onto the polymer clay without any problems. It was fun to brush onto the velvety surface and there were wonderful impressions left behind by the brushstrokes. There were definitely drips and runs to clear up as well. Initially I can say everything looks good, but I will be watching in the future, especially around temperature changes to see how well the bond between the polymer clay and wax holds up.

Torso with 1 layer of wax and broken paper crow

Torso with silk crow and numbers

I'm not sure where I want to go next, so I am pondering questions such as do I want to add any color, do I want to play with intaglio (very likely), and when will it get too heavy to support it's own weight when hung by wire from the back side. Remember this project is an experiment from the polymer clay construction aspect as well as the encasutic aspect.

Brushed Wax Trial #1

2011-12-31T14:25:00.000-08:00

What I did: I used a bleached white beeswax since this project was on a board. I brushed several layers on, crisscrossing each layer and using the heat gun between each layer. I wanted to muck up the corners a bit so I mixed some paint to be the same color as the butterfly and thinned it with a lot of the plain beeswax. The result was too clean so I started playing with using an old credit card to scrape on more layers. I added some black and some white as well as the blue. I cleaned up the edges a bit and stopped there for the evening. The next day the wax was much more translucent and I buffed it to a shine with a cloth. I used a black oil pigment stick around the outside edges to accentuate the texture. After I applied and rubbed it all around, I used some odorless thinner to get the excess pigment off. It seemed to make some changes in the wax as well. I rubbed off some of the brushstrokes and everything became cloudy. I’ll have to do some research to see if it was the type of wax or the thinner but I didn’t have this problem the last time I did it in someone else’s studio. I waited to see if I could buff it back to a shine once it had rested for a bit. Luckily buffing did the trick and now I am trying to decide if I imagined the problem.

With just wax and encaustic paint.

After applying the oil stick.

What I learned:

You can use a brush and the heat gun together to add some nice texture if you didn’t get what you wanted with the original application.
It’s handy to have some extra pieces of 4 ply mat board around to try ideas and test colors before you work on the real piece. Here’s an ATC card I made while futzing around with ideas. I made the circles using the eraser of a pencil.

Artist Trading Card (2.5" x 3.5")

The last decision is to figure out how I want to finish the sides. I could paint them black with an acrylic paint or maybe stain them a nice dark brown. I like the outcome of the piece and I’d like to make a much larger version down the road.

Cusp of a New Year

2011-12-29T16:55:00.000-08:00

Well here we are right before the end of 2011. Last year I took an encaustic workshop geared toward photographers and became enamored with the process. I've decided to start a blog to capture my art resolutions and progress for 2012.

This year I plan on learning a lot more about how to successfully combine my photography with encaustic processes. I am not going to specify topics or subject matter because I hope by the end of this, I will have a much better idea of what combination of photography, mixed media, and wax will be best suited to my work.

Art Resolution:

Each month I resolve to research at least 1 new combination of my photography and encaustic/mixed medium processes. By this I mean to add something new to the equation each month. The research will include changing the substrates and media. I realize that a lot of this experience will encompass working with new materials and the output may just be practice type pieces, but I hope to keep a narrative in mind for approaching new work also.

My goal is to find new methods of working which will lend themselves to new bodies of work and to experience some artist growth.

Here is the first piece I will be working on and a shot of my encaustic palette - aka a pancake griddle. The butterfly piece is an inkjet print glued to a cradled birch board box. It is 6" by 6". I plan on using some conte crayon pencils to accent the wings and brush on my beeswax to add some texture on the top. I will be using pigment oil sticks to accent the texture. I haven't really played with the brushing of the wax for texture yet, so that's what I'll be learning about in January.

By the way, thanks to my buddy Suzanne for letting me photograph her butterfly collection!

Stay tuned for the results and pictures of the gradual execution.