First Steps at Encaustic

I have always admired encaustic projects but it took me quite some time to dare try it myself.

What I love about encaustic is that this technique is very forgiving. You can always add layers, remelt, scrap off what you don't like or even embrace happy accidents ;)

I had a first play with this technique - trying to add texture, embed objects, add colour and also remove some of it.

Adding colour with oil pastels worked quite well - but not with all brands I had at home. It took some time until I found the one that was soft enough but also gave enough pigment.

 
I used scraps from an old French botanical textbook alongside some scraps from an old magazine from around 1940 to build up the background.

I encorporated rusted and patina-ed objects as well as an old yellowish tinted watch glass.

The frozen charlotte head is a cast made from an original and done with white UTEE. I combined it with an old watch key.

I call that yellow watch glass element my "encaustic fried egg" ;)

I love the highly textural feel that you can create with encaustic! And as I love assemblage too and using found objects, I really enjoyed embedding some of my "treasures" to the prepared surface.

The vintage buttons were a fleamarket find from my last visit to the Vienna Naschmarkt fleamarket. I love that they have a history - even (or especially) if it is a history of an ordinary life spent in a sewing chest...maybe being re-used several times.

Paint board, 4'' x 6''.
Bees wax, Palembang Dammar resin, oil pastels, black wire, found objects, scraps from old books.

A New Art Journal Page

I recently created an art journal page on my "creative fun blog" Von Pappe II as a project for Our Creative Corner.
If you are interested in that page too, you can get to the post by clicking here.

I loved the process and the result so much that I decided to do another page using the same technique and materials. But this time I wanted to make the process more visible for you - so I created a slide show which shows what I  added - bit by bit - to my page. But first let me show you both pages in my journal:

The left page was the one done for OCC and the right page is the one I want to share with you today. I took a picture of it every time I had added some new details (collaged items, drawn circles, stamping) - so you can follow the genesis of this page in detail and also learn a bit about how my creative process works.

Like with the left side page I used scraps from my antique watchmakers cabinet, old watch glass labels, scraps from a magazine from the 1930s, DecoArt matte Decou-Page, Distress markers and watercolour pencils.

I loved the various colour tones of the crumpled paper pieces. These were used in the watchmakers cabinet to help storing the watch glasses safely. The labels have all come off the hundreds of watch glasses that the cabinet held when I received it. I love the numbers on them - like a secret "code" I do not understand.

As I took the first images of my journal page (at the stage of preparing the background by collageing those scraps to the page) at a different angle than the others I show these separately - so you can see how I started my page:

Some of the steps during the process seem rather subtle, but they are important when it comes to creating depth.

For example the shading of the ephemeras' edges with the Distress markers. It makes the torn edges and overlaps pop so much more!

This is an image taken before "distressing" the edges of the glued on scraps.

And this one shows the difference after shading the edges:

See the difference? 

The Decou-Page matte glue and varnish is perfect for preparing a background like this...it dries really fast and also helps with smudging the Distress marker lines to shade the elements I want to make more prominent. 

Then I used the black (and also a pink) watercolour pencil and a water loaded brush to add some circles:

As you can see I also added some white highlights. When doing the background collage I tried to form "groups" of similar shaped objects...three circles in a vertical line...or three of the rectangle labels in a line:

By stamping (with Tim Holtz and Ditzie Designs stamps and black archival ink) I added some texture. But I let the ephemera play the main role.

The "message" of my journal page was stamped onto one of the pages of the old magazine (using a Red Lead stamp). Then I tore it to shape and glued it to that spot that felt as the "most boring" to me. For a finish I shaded the edges of that label with my "black soot" Distress marker.

I hope you like my journal page and enjoyed watching the slide show too.
I enter this journal page to Art Journal Journey's May collection, where "Circles" are wanted.... I can never get enough of circles honestly  ;)

xoxo Claudia