the lesser-known pork banjo cut

just a quick little encaustic painting that i've been meaning to get done for awhile. finally took a few minutes to finish it up. hooray for banjo pigs - they can't be stopped!

for the how-to portion of the post... i painted some layers of pink then purple and fused it all flat. then i took a needle stylus and incised all the lines in the wax. then i took some pink and yellow oil sticks and rubbed them into the lines wiping away all the excess paint. presto magico: a banjo pig!

encaustic painting demo nov 19

This Friday at the Reagan Academy in Springville, Utah I will be participating in the Art and Gift Basket Auction. I'll be doing an encaustic painting demo from 6-8 and whatever I make will be auctioned off at the end. All proceeds will go to the school. So if you're curious about encaustic painting, want to bid on some awesome gift baskets, or just like hanging out at a middle school gymnasium on a friday night - come on by!

So what is encaustic you might be wondering? It is the method of painting with melted beeswax combined with resin and pigment. It dates all the way back to ancient greece. When I have a bit more time, I'll put together a more comprehensive tutorial.

For the past year I've been learning all about encaustic painting, but I'm still quite the novice. I've taken three workshops so far, and have done a little bit of practicing here and there, but haven't had much time to devote to it. So these samples are no great works, but some of the experiments that have turned out maybe not so bad.

This is my studio. You can see the skillet is full of melted encaustic medium (beeswax and damar resin). There is a sheet of aluminum with a hot plate underneath to use as a palette. You have to have good ventilation: the contraption on the middle left. The torch in the foreground is for fusing. You have to heat every layer of paint to fuse it to the previous ones.  

Encaustic is super versatile. You can have lots of texture or be smooth as glass like the painting at the very top.

You can use it for collage or embedding objects. This was an experiment where I poured the wax over little scrolls of paper.

This was from a class where I learned about layering and using oil paint in between those layers.

One of the coolest things about encaustic is the translucent quality of the wax. You can play around with layers and easily create depth. This was a really early experiment. I hadn't quite gotten the hang of fusing. I sort of over-melted those trees which is why they are a little mushy and feathery in spots. I also hadn't yet figured out how to paint details, so the little red riding hood is a print-out collaged into the wax.

So if you find yourself in Utah Valley this Friday Nov 19 - drop on by the Reagan Academy and say "Hi!"

Ronald Reagan Academy
1143 West Center Street
Springville, UT

art demos and silent auction 6-8
live art auction 8-9

little wonder tv spot

Last weekend Leslie Sell, CEO of The Little Wonder Company, was on a local Minneapolis tv show touting the Little Wonder Custom Children's Books. I did the illustrations for these last year, with some additional attributes a couple months ago. A nice segment, and hopefully lots and lots of sales for Leslie! ('tis the season after all!) Go check out the site and you can even build your own character.

gnomey and deerie

just a little sumpin sumpin i've been working on today. some more puppets to animate in aftereffects.

cantonese rhyming powers activate!

So I know I'm crap at "dramatic lighting" but I tried anyway. Here is a rhyme scene for the words apple, lock and fire. They rhyme...in Cantonese.

banjo pig in motion!

I've been wanting to learn AfterEffects forever, and finally getting some time at work to do some training. Here's my attempt at trying to figure out how to animate. hooray for banjo pigs!