Painting flowers in hot wax

Video Demonstration : Encaustic Art

This latest video from Art In Wax show me painting in hot wax some summer flowers.
The flowers are based on a clematis style flower, we have many clematis coming into flower in our garden at the moment. Clematis come in many shapes and sizes and wonderful colours, we have three varieties ourselves with the small compact pink blooms coming early in May to larger white and a purple variety blooming as the summer progresses.

The flowers I have painted here are “in the style of” a clematis, with so many types to choose from this is my own interpretation, as with many of my paintings I consider the subject to be an impression of.

Demonstration

The film shows how the flower is painting in hot wax, and gives reference to the watercolour I painted a few days ago. I have recently rekindled my fondness for watercolors and using them in parallel with the wax is great fun.

See for yourself

The pictures below show what I’ve been working on in this subject. The watercolour I used as a reference in the video below is the pink one on the right and the center picture is done using watercolour pencils, which I find great to sketch with, the framed paintings are both Encaustic paintings and approximatley A5 in size and are for sale, contact me for details and availability.

And this is the video now live :

If you have enjoyed seeing this demonstration please leave me a comment or perhaps share a link to this page on twitter or facebook.

Artist’s Block Debunked

Ever wonder why you’re stuck in a rut? When you’ve acknowledged you are experiencing artist’s block, whether it is writing or making a song or doing a series of paintings, it’s high time for you to replenish your energies and take some steps so that you’d gain your momentum back. This happens to everyone, so don’t be too hard on yourself and always remember that taking the next step, no matter how small it is, is still one step closer to your goal. Sounds daunting? Here are some steps so that you can get your mind, body and spirit to be inspired by the world again.

Are you cooped up in your studio for hours on end or even days? Take a walk outside and smell the roses again. You can watch some films in Greenwich Picturehouse, join any workshop or just visit nearby galleries or the Tate Modern. Get in touch with your fellow artists and reconnect with them. Your confidence level may be at a low at this time but once you surround yourself with positive and inspiring people, their energies will be infectious and you will be back to your chipper self again, ready to work. You can also play some online games via foxybingo to take your mind off your workload. With its vibrant online community, you can meet new friends and get inspired by fellow artists as well who are also in this exciting community.

Finally, change your attitude about work. If you feel like the work week is going slow and arduous, why not make a to-do list or set some daily goals. At the end of the day, you can feel fulfilled when you check off your daily goals. It can be cleaning your brushes, priming your canvas or just walking your dog, every little thing counts.

Sweet Peas – An English Summer Favorite

Having just sown some sweet pea seeds in the garden last week, we are looking forward to one of our favorite flowers blooming in the summer. Sweet peas are a delicate and beautiful plant with an abundance of flowers and a very sweet scent.

The sweet pea was developed by Henry Eckford via wikipedia a nurseryman of the Victorian era, which has been developed and evolved into the sweet peas, in many varieties we know today.

Inspired to paint

So I thought why not – Paint some Sweet Peas!

I did some sketching and you can see how I got on below, I did my pencil drawing and then my encaustic painting. I like to sketch sometimes before stating my hot wax pictures, I use this as a guide more than something to copy from, but they help me keep on track so to speak as I get invloved with the wax. I then decided to doodle on the drawing with some watercolour paints and this is what I ended up with ……..

Encaustic Painting : Sweet Peas

This is the encaustic, hot wax version of the painting, it is an A4 encaustic painting on gloss card, it was created using some of my favorite colours, pinks and purples …… now just got to wait for the real flowers to grow and flower in the garden.

Sunflower Valley : Presented Mounted and Photographed

Original Art in hot wax : Sunflowers

I have just finished this piece featuring a valley of sunflowers.

I worked in hot wax on a A3 gloss card painting using my hot iron and stylus tools together with a heat gun for remelting the wax once applied.

I have been painting a lot of Sunflowers of late, and this piece took about 10 hours in several sessions for me to get to where I wanted to be. I used to find I liked to finish a painting in one or two sessions but I have changed the way I work now and often feel coming back to a piece after a few hours or days break I can see how to develop the picture, and as encaustic wax is so versatile I can easily remelt and rework the piece until I am happy with the work.

Photographing Art Work

It can be a challenge photographing artwork to show online. I find that with my wax art it can be difficult to show the subtlety of the work as when displayed on a computer screen lines in the wax which add a great texture in real life can look clumsy when photographed. Likewise the colours and the sheen, although they do show, often have much more depth than represented in online screen view.

Presenting and showing artwork online

It is also, at times, difficult to know how to present the paintings, I sometimes use a display easel to demonstrate how a painting could be displayed or a frame, which can help show how a piece maybe used. But this doesn’t always give the true feeling of size.

When we photographed the “Splash of colour – flower meadow” paintings this week I decided to hold the pictures to give a perspective to the size. I had a fellow artist comment on how effective this was and so again with this painting I am showing it in relationship to its surroundings and me holding it.

This picture is approx. 16 x 11 in size and the mount in a mid to dark blue really highlights the golden yellows of the Sunflower subject I feel.

What do you think?

What do you think?
Why not leave me a blog comment below.

Flower Meadow : A real splash of colour

I have been working on some larger pieces of encaustic art recently and this is one of them and is just over 16 x 11 inches in size.

I paint from my imagination most of the time, and on the day I started this painting I wanted to use lots of colour, and over the three sessions it took to complete I added more and more layers of coloured wax and as you can see below its a “real splash of colour”.

This picture was great fun to paint, I let my imagination flow with the wax, adding all sorts of flowers into this meadow type scene ……. as you can see we also had fun taking the photos …..