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.

Photographic Art – Yellow Lily

I may be the painter (Artist) in our household, but my husband Adrian is most definitely the Photographic Artist. This weeks see one of his pictures become available to buy online from an Art store that sells prints and canvas prints.

Yellow Lily By Adrian Rayfield

Adrian’s photograph of the yellow Lily is hanging in our hallway as a canvas, the photograph was taken in the Summer (2011) in our garden, we grew a bed of lilies this year and this was a beauty in the bunch.

Easyart and Next Art2Order

The photograph was accepted on the the Easyart website this week as part of their catalogue, it is also featured in the Next Art2order gallery for purchase as a framed print or canvas print.

Original Art : Flowers in wax as gifts

Encaustic Art – Mini Series

I am loving painting these small series of paintings I am doing at the moment, having just finish a set of three herb paintings for our kitchen, I was asked if I would paint some 6 x 4 paintings to be given as Christmas gifts. I have now finished the set of six paintings. Each painting is unique, three are flowers in pots / vases and three are florals : Yellow Roses, Freesia and a colourful Daisy.

Something a bit different

I am showing three of the paintings below these are a mix of flowers. They are to be given as Christmas presents by someone who wants to give “something a bit different this year”, she is giving each of them with a mini display easel, thus making them a bit more quirky than if they were just framed.

Displaying Art In Wax

Encaustic paintings, i.e paintings created in wax, can be displayed without framing I personally love seeing these smaller pictures displayed this way as the sheen and texture really shows. Art In Wax can also be framed and looks good in a mount and frame, it is best to keep the wax from touching the surface of the glass as this could effect the painting.

A weekend of painting Art for our Kitchen

Herbs In Wax

This weekend I set myself the challenge of creating three new paintings for our home. Over the past week we have re-decorated our kitchen and it looks great in its new crisp green colour.

Art In Wax : Home Decor

With the decorating now done, we started to think about the decor and purchased three matching wood box frames together with some 10 x 12 cream mounts to compliment the frames and to co-ordinate with the walls.

The wall that the paintings are for is in the dinning area at the far end of the kitchen, and are in a good place to view and yet away from the cooking etc, it is also well lit as it is adjacent to the patio doors.

A Trio of Art In Wax

I tried out a few of my existing paintings but the kitchen needed something new, hence I came up with the idea of herbs, which I haven’t painting before and would fit nicely into a kitchen theme.

As flowers are my passion to paint, I started my research by looking at flowering herbs and decided on a few possibilities, I then sketched these very roughly. I don’t always draw my subjects before painting but it is good as a point of reference when creating a specific topic, I occasionally paint from photographs too, although 90% of my work is from my imagination.

I think of my style of painting as impressionistic and not technical, when I sketch I use gel pens on mostly on black paper, not sure why exactly but it works for me and I like the way the gel pens flow.

I have decided to show my sketches here in this post, just as an example of the process, they are only my guide and not to be considered too closely. Many people ask me how I get the detail into my wax paintings, this sketching part of the process helps as it reminds me of my ideas. Some of my paintings take time to paint and as I am not currently a full time artist I don’t always have the time to paint my ideas when I have them so making these quick sketches helps me recall what I imagined and want to paint.

As you can see from my drawings I sketched several herbs and decided to paint, pots of Thyme, Chives and Sage, I also painted Mint but the result wasn’t to my taste!

More of my paintings can be viewed online in the Art In Wax gallery, some are for sale and if you would like a floral piece commissioned please contact me.

How I paint an Encaustic Daisy

Daisies are one of my favourite shape of flower, and lots of flowers have this shape, Asters, Sunflowers, Cone flowers, and of course the beautiful Marguerite daisy, which comes in many colours and looks wonderful in great swaves.

The daisy features a lot in Art In Wax, it is the basis for the logo, website design and blog theme, it is also one of the first flowers I painted in encaustic wax. So I thought this would make a great demonstration of how I paint in wax.

My husband Adrian has taken a series of photos of the stages and hopefully you can see how I work, bringing together the coloured wax to form this cute little picture of a daisy.

Tools and Materials I used :
Encaustic Iron
Encaustic Gloss Paper A6 size
Encaustic Wax – Colours : White, Pastel Mint, Leaf Green, Mid Yellow and Orange
Scribing Tool
Tissues
Polishing Cloth

Background
The first thing I do is create a light background for the painting. I coat the iron with White wax and add two small bands of the Pastel Mint wax and with one passing onto the card create a light background.

Stem and Leaves
Using the edge of the iron with some of the green wax, I make one stroke to create the stem, the leaves are then pushed out from the base of the stem to create two leaf shapes.

Petals
I use the tip of the iron and add a small ring of Yellow wax in drops to the card about where I imagine the top of the diasy will be. The petals are formed by gently pushing the wax drops into a petal shapes.
The number of petals varies every time I do this and can depend on how the wax flows.

Center – Seed Head
Next comes the center of the daisy, I use the tip of the iron and some Orange wax to form a small round just touching the Yellow of the petals, being careful not to bleed the Orange into the Yellow too much. Although when this happens it can give a nice Orange stripe to the finished flower.

Finishing
The wax has a light polish and I add a few dots with the scribing tool to the edge of the flower head for a little bit of texture.

Just need to sign it into the wax and I’m all done!

More demonstrations in the future

I hope you like this little demonstration of encaustic art, we hope to create some videos in the coming months to demonstrate how I paint in action!

Owning an Original Encaustic Daisy Painting By Hazel Rayfield

If you would like to own one of my Encaustic Daisy paintings, they are 6 x 4 inches in size and come backed with a mount board and can be purchased direct from me. Please contact me direct for details of how to buy an Original Encaustic Daisy Painting.

Encaustic Art By Hazel Rayfield
Photography By Adrian Rayfield

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