post 29: pajaro valley encaustic show

 

Earlier this year I got two pieces into a juried show at the Pajaro Valley Arts Council.  I decided to head home to California for the weekend to go to the opening show. It was a lovely weekend spent driving down to Santa Cruz with my mom, going to the show, seeing old friends, and melting in a very very warm gallery.

I'd taken a lot of what turned out to be terrible photos of the party, and thought I'd accidentally deleted them when I uploaded them to the computer. Couldn't find them anywhere! But when I was looking for those needle felting photos the other day, I stumbled across the photos I took. They'd been filed into 2008. Crazy computer. So here are my photos of the show as well as some taken by my mom. Hers are the ones in focus.

Me and my little paintings.

This is Daniella Woolf, one of the curators of the show. I've taken a few workshops from her. She is the most fabulous teacher and a delightful person. Someday I want to be in California long enough to take a class at their studio Wax Works West.

A quick primer on encaustic.

The place was packed all afternoon, and about 100 degrees...inside.

 

Apologies for such dreadful photographs. I think I would have been better off using my phone camera than the thing I was using. Oh well. Hope you enjoyed seeing some of the different things people are doing with encaustic. I'm getting myself inspired for my next 30 day challenge. I'll give you a hint. It has to do with encaustic painting. :)

day 8: sneak peak - santa dolorosa

Here's a little something I've been working on here and there. This is the digital painting/sketch for a big encaustic painting. I've transferred the face to the wax to use as an underpainting for pastels and then the rest will be a built up monochromatic wax texture. Well, that's the plan anyway. I'm hoping to have time this weekend to work on it some more.

day 2: recent Amazon impulse buys

 Encaustic is painting with melted beeswax. I've done some entries about it in the past so click on the encaustic tag if you'd like to see more of it. But suffice to say, I'm maybe a bit obsessed with it, and must have any and all things encaustic. It's not too overwhelming of a feat though. When I started there were maybe three books available. Now it's up to eight. 

This book above is the latest by Daniella Woolf. I've taken two week-long workshops from her through R&F Encaustics. She is a fabulous teacher. She puts together beautiful books and DVDs.

 

 

 This next batch all have to do with building shadowboxes. Which I have not done for years. I have a project in mind that combines a shadowbox with automata. So far it has been stuck at the sketch stage for months and I avoid taking it any further by buying books tangentially related. Guess I need to get on that.

I love folk art. The latest batch has been more early Christianity-related but I also really love Mexican folk art, especially Day of the Dead. Lately I've been loving the large statues made for Semana Santa (Holy Week) and I've started working on a large (for me) encaustic painting of the Virgen Dolorosa. A couple weeks ago I had the face just about finally looking alright, and I overfused it! One eye melted down to her cheek. D'oh. Scraped the whole thing off.

Not sure what the endgame is with any of this, but this is reminding me to stop buying books and just sit down and paint.

Wax Show this weekend!

A few weeks ago I submitted two encaustic paintings to this juried show (see postcard above), and both were accepted! The opening reception is this weekend, so if you are in the Santa Cruz, CA area, you should drop by. I'll be going on a whirlwind California trip so I can be there. I'm quite looking forward to it!

New Year's Check-In

Happy New Year Internets!

Was thinking I should post some artwork, but don't really have anything I feel like showing, or am allowed to show, or have access to at the moment, so here is a drawing I did when maybe I was, oh, four? That's the last time I had long blond hair, so thinking then. Though one doesn't write with cursive at four and I don't remember being a genius so... hmmm. Mystery.

And here is my New Year's weekend project. I rearranged and organized my studio for a better workflow. Put up those shelves, and my encaustic space is ready to go. Just need to catch up on some other things, and then I will be a paintin' fool!

And finally, I was going to include a screenshot from Maryn's Laser Adventure, but looks like the DVD won't let me. So here is a drawing of what it looks like. Oh man did I stare hard at that little red light. My Merry Christmas gift to myself: Lasik Eye Surgery! It's been a week and a half, and it's fantastic! At last check-in my right eye was 20/20 and my left was 20/25. I do not for one second miss my glasses. Hooray for shooting laser beams into my face!

And that's it for now. I have a few projects percolating, work at Imagine Learning as usual, and my sweet encaustic set-up calling my name. Things to do, things to do!

Here's to a busy year!

feliz dia de los muertos!

Hope y'all had a fabulous Halloween! I took a couples hours off from freelance to paint a happy skull. This is my latest encaustic painting, an experiment with accretion: basically lots of layers of drybrushing.

I've been taking an online encaustic course from the lovely and talented Judy Wise, which has been fabulous. We're in the middle of four weeks of daily lessons, which makes me super excited to go home from work and paint every night. Unfortunately the freelance has to come first, so haven't done much for the class. Hopefully I will have some more time to paint soon.

Here's another I did last week for the class. The assignment was color mixing and carbon transfer. I only had white saral paper, which didn't show up well, so I tried a bunch of other things... blobby lines as a result, but it's fun. I quite enjoy the idea of Gary the Chicken Whisperer.

Feliz dia de los muertos and a happy november to you all!

new house!

Oh yeah, I have a blog. So I've been a little busy lately. I bought a house! My first ever house. It's fabulous. It's a simple little 1961 brick rambler, with a walk-out basement. The basement is essentially a crafty arty wonderland. I have a great office space with an adjacent patio, a workshop, and a room for encaustic painting. Oh the projects I can make! Will update as spaces become functional.

sweet pea benefit boutique

Want to amaze and impress your friends by owning an actual encaustic painting? Or how about all five Sugarplum Ballerina books when the fifth book isn't even out yet? You can do these things and more at the Sweet Pea Benefit Boutique!

The Sweet Pea Benefit Boutique is a charity auction whose funds will go to help pay for fertility treatments for a couple of folks, one being my pal Devanie. Go check out all the cool things for auction! Bid lots! Devanie needs a baby. :)

imagine learning office + art!

 
Ever wonder what the Imagine Learning offices look like? We moved to a new building about a year ago and it's pretty fancy. We just hung up 6 foot prints in the halls, which was interesting since the original artwork was originally done at 600x800 pixels! The picture above is of encaustic paintings of the level one characters I did for the lobby. That was fun. In the article you'll see other art done by Jim and Nate for the lobby. Nate's "bronze" booster is pretty awesome and Jim's portraits of the Level Two characters turned out great.

All this and more at the Imagine Learning Blog:

The best-decorated classrooms and a tour of Imagine Learning

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