Mixing it up

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Super Moon!

Super Moon!

All of the sudden I decided to change it up! I think that I was inspired by this photo that I took of the super moon (I think it was July 7 or 8). The photo itself didn’t turn out, but the scene in person was pretty awesome. We had gone out on the boat with friends to watch the fireworks from the water…when I turned and looked back there was all this water churning up behind the boat and this really big moon with a super reflection. So, in order to keep the memory I did take a photo…which is working as a good reference. I think I will do several of these as paintings and drawings. The encaustic painting was really fun to do. It’s not my usual style…but I found it very liberating!

Cone Flower

Cone Flower

After that I decided to try a more impressionistic approach using encaustic…and the cone flower is the result. It’s a difficult medium to work with, so this is more of learning experience. I used casein to paint the ground and then worked on top of the wax medium with a combination of oil pastels and encaustic paint. I really like working on the birch panel.

I am keeping up pretty well with my 5 minutes sketches! Good warm ups.

coneflower5min

Sketching

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Water Soluble Crayon and Colored Pencil

Water Soluble Crayon and Colored Pencil

Lately sketching is all I can manage. I feel frustrated with the lack of time, and I need to let that go. I have decided to do at least one 5 minute sketch everyday. You can’t really accomplish a whole lot in 5 minutes, but it is amazing what you can do! And, it’s kind of like 10 minutes of yoga, its better than nothing and still adds value. The other thing about sketching that is good for me is that it just gets my hand and my head moving together. I am also adding some journal entries to the sketch and that is good too. Helps me focus on the moment and I think it will be nice to reflect back on.

sketch

sketch

My goal this weekend will be to start a piece that I intend to finish…more than just a sketch. But the sketch will get me there!

5 to 7 minute sketch

5 to 7 minute sketch

Emerging Series

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Final

Final

It’s very difficult (for me) to come upon aubject-matter that I am happy to keep working on. This dandelion series seems to be keeping my attention. The good thing about this is that it’s great for my learning process and for producing some work that others seem to enjoy. You just can’t get to final results without lots of experiments and failures…there is really no way around it. The piece above is the largest encaustic I have done so far–approximately 5″ x 9″. I know this doesn’t seem large, but when you are working at 5″ x 7″ and smaller those few inches really do make a difference!

Found wood panel with ground

Found wood panel with ground

Even though there are things I will do differently in the next piece, this one pulled together a lot of things I have learned from previous attempts. I was really happy to be able to add some casein successfully at the end.

I am finding that I miss drawing when I do the photo encaustic, but I love the quick results. I think that I have to be more forgiving of myself, when I don’t have the time I need for painting or drawing, it’s okay to work with photos!

Underpainting with encaustic

Underpainting with encaustic

 

New Substrate

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photo encaustic: image printed on light pink tissue

photo encaustic: image printed on light pink tissue

While looking for something to work on for encaustic that would be easy to deal with in terms of finishing and ready to hang I came across cradled birch panel. This seems like it might be perfect for a range of work. Today I worked on some photo encaustic and that turned out pretty well. I think that these will also work for casein and even colored pencil with the right ground. The dandelions seem to be popular–so I am going to work on a bunch of these. I have had several friends respond well to these, so I will be giving some away. This will help me perfect techniques and motivate me to feel good about doing some “repeats”. The nice thing about the encaustic is that each one turns out a little different, so they are all unique.

photo encaustic on stone

photo encaustic on stone

Last weekend we took the boat to Isle Au Haut. It was a beautiful day for a hike and such a great spot to visit. I collected stones (some small, some large enough for encaustic) and a few shells. I found one shell that was absolutely fabulous! A rare find up on the cliffs overlooking the water.  I will post that soon.

crabclawred

Looking forward to some time off the day job to pursue art projects.