Going Large : Encaustic Painting

As I have blogged about previously I paint in wax using a specialist encaustic iron and stylus, my preferred support is encaustic gloss card. I started painting at A6 size then found A5 gave me more room and worked better for some of my subjects, I then discovered the world of ACEO and began to paint in miniature too. So it would be fair to say I just love to paint and at any size as long as it suits my idea for a subject.

Painting larger pictures in molten wax brings new challenges, the pictures displayed here in this blog post are A3 (approx. 16.5 x 12 inches), so much larger than I have done before, but great fun to do.

Most of my painting I do sitting down, I find the iron more comfortable that way but with these pictures I needed to stand for a lot of the time, which in itself gives the angle of the iron a different feel and allows for a new bold creativeness.

Wisteria Lake : Painted in Wax

The way I paint I tend to do a whole painting in one go, occasionally I will come back and tweak a little, but pretty much I like to have time to do the whole thing in one session. This was not the case in the instance of “Wisteria Lake” as I call it. With this painting being larger, it needed more wax and more time than I had available in one session. It has therefore been a work in progress, which has worked well on this project as I have taken time to develop the original idea for the picture, which I have painted before in A6 size.

It is just a simple scene, that just came to me one day when pondering a peaceful place. The sun setting over a lake, with a little reflection in the water, a Wisteria hanging over the edge of the water and a few reeds and bulrushes in the foreground, if you look carefully a dragonfly or two is in there too!

As an artist, I am my own worst critic, but I really like this painting and will have it mounted and find a place to hang it where I can see the beauty in the peaceful place it represents to me.

Being Bold and Beautiful

In contrast, the picture of the tree peony, is more impressionistic and was inspired by some flowers (I’m not sure if they were peony) I saw while on holiday and sketched as I do sometimes, I don’t tend to copy my drawings but they remind me of the ideas I have in and between my encaustic painting sessions. I did this picture in one session, it just flowed, as it does! the wax and the creativity ……

To view more pictures please visit the Art In Wax online gallery.