Encaustic Leaves

I made this piece after visiting a park with my friends. It was fall 2015 and leaves were on the ground. I wanted to experiment with encasing the leaves with encaustic.

 This is a detail picture showing that I used an old rusted pop can found just hiding under the leaves. My friends didn't understand why I was collecting garbage along the way. I loved the way the pop can was disintegrating and at first glance was hardly recognizable.

Rocks & Rain

In 2014 my husband & I went on a trip to Ireland with friends. This was the first time we had ever been to Ireland as well as it being the first time we've ever taken holidays with friends. What a fantastic trip we had. Ireland is the place to go for "R & R"...rocks and rain. I've never seen so many rocks in all my life. Newfoundland doesn't even come close. I've also never seen so much rain. It rained every day. It didn't bother us at all, we just kept going & it just added to the wonderful ambience of the landscape.

Along our travels I would do my normal collecting of anything I thought was interesting. This is better than any shop if you ask me. Beautiful, free and just sitting there offering up it's glory. The feather was actually collected on the first day we arrived. Guinness...what a fantastic facility inside Dublin. The feather was along side the road sitting in water with dirt & gravel stuck to it. Well...I just love that sort of thing.

 

The dried thistle was collected on the Aran Islands. Miles & miles of rock made into pens for grazing livestock & farmland. It was so windy that sometimes I just had to sit down to wait for the gust to pass so I could gain my footing. The dried thistle was so perfect in this landscape and I had Chris cut of one of the heads & I carried it in my hand until we got back to the bed and breakfast that evening. It was so delicate I was afraid that it would crush if I put it in my bag.
Chris saw the rust piece & instantly I just had to have it.

Rocks & Rain is rough and a perfect fitting for my Irish piece. Everything except the rust has been encased in encaustic wax. It was the first time I had been in the studio in about seven weeks. I was completely in a zone & afraid to leave even to eat for fear that the moment would end.

Nature's Offering 2

Nature's Offering 2 is now complete...

With solid background it's not as delicate as my first piece. I'm really loving the effect of the plaster over canvas and the encaustic medium lets all the natural beauty show through.

I've attached dried poppy heads, bark, birch bark, antler buttons, porcupine quills & a pressed kale leaf from my veggie patch last year. As stated previously, the metal strip is the cutting edge from a cellophane box that's been taken out of the ashes of the wood stove.

I don't think I'm done with the bark collected from the property and I really love how the encaustic medium strengthens it without changing it's texture. This may just be my very first series of work.

Studio Peak

This is a piece that started to develop when my husband, Chris, gave me some metal out of his studio's wood stove.

It's the cutting strip from a celophane box. I had some bark that had already been prepared with paint & encaustic and going through the offering bowl had my creative juices going. So I have a general layout & now this piece is in the beginning stages of preparing the background.

Natures Offering

Natures Offering was inspired by an artist that I've been following, Bridgette Guerzon Mills. I'm drawn to encaustic painting because of its natural elements. It's the reason why I wanted to become a bee keeper...little did I know that the wax is the smallest portion of a bee harvest.

It took quite a while to complete because as usual my pieces develop over time. I almost never start out with a vision of a completed piece.

I started with canvas that I distressed using a razor blade & needle nose pliers. At first I was very delicate but as my confidence built I had a heaver hand with the razor. Then I added plasterwrap that is used in sculpting. The pieces were a little flimsy so I backed the canvas with more plaster. I added some oil painted accents along with some encaustic gesso & then I covered everything with encaustic wax.

I love anything rustic and raw looking. A couple of weeks ago my daughter came home for the weekend and we spent some time in the woods. She was able to 'shuck' the bark off of a dead tree and it worked perfectly for my hanger. The bark is very strange and spongy and I've been eying it for quite some time. I was so excited to have it and that weekend happened to be quite windy. I had quite a hard time getting my bark to the car without it blowing away in bits.

Special thanks to Jesika for shucking the bark and to Keith Stewart for saving me the hornets nest. I know he thinks I'm crazy but he's a fantastic enabler.

Encaustic over Plaster

Plaster all started because of a new book I purchased called "Plaster Studio" by Stephanie Lee and Judy Wise. My husband sent me the link thinking that I would enjoy it and he was right. If you're interested, take a look at this YouTube video.

I still have not discovered a way to get good photos of my encaustic work. There is always a shine spot & no matter how hard I try I can't seem to figure it out. I guess I need some photography lessons.
 

I was hooked as soon as I saw that they were showing techniques in the book using encaustic medium. This is my first piece exploring with plaster. I really love the texture but its damn messy stuff. I haven't been able to bring out fabric in my studio while any plaster is in the works. Oh...if only I had a studio conducive to my eclectic ways....with work stations to fix my artistic appetite.

Stimulating ...A GOE Challenge

One of the members of the GOE group gave us a container with some odds & ends and a word for inspiration, for us to use in our challenge. I've been pondering for quite some time & finally I had to just have it done because today was the last day I had to work on it. No more messing around. I always seem to run out of time and pressure to finish seems to be my best friend lately.

The word in the box was Stimulating. So I just did something that I find stimulating...that's working in encaustic. I used a wipe up tissue that I kept from a day of dying at a friends house for the backdrop. The colour matched perfectly with the rovings that were in the box. I added Pearl X, beads, a crayon coloured bottle cap, a tyvek & copper bead, along with some felted trimmings my daughter gave me last Christmas.

This is just a detail shot.

Squirrel...a family term for distraction

My family has a term for attention deficit that we got while playing with our dogs. Dogs live in the moment and no matter what they're doing, if a squirrel enters their domain...it's all about the squirrel. So it's a playful term we use whenever we get distracted.

I was up in my studio trying to come up with a piece for the latest GOE challenge. I had everything that I needed in front of me and somehow I had a squirrel moment & ended up with this piece. It had nothing...NOTHING...in it that I was supposed to use for the challenge.

This piece is called All Cocked UP. It was a little dark but the rooster is crowing so I guess he's got his timing all mixed up...as roosters sometimes do when they're young.

Teenage Head Re-Visited

Finally Teenage Head is mounted & ready to hang.

An encaustic piece made from computer parts my son collected. I have posted this piece before it was mounted & the technique & meaning have already been shared.
I hope you enjoy it as much as I had fun creating it.

Encaustic Poppies

I just love dried poppy heads. My favorite are the big fat ones but unfortunately that's not what I had on hand. I wanted to make something with them but I wasn't sure if I could do it in encaustic wax because they're so delicate. The wax actually helped strengthen them. I wouldn't pick at them or anything but they are stronger then when I started.

 I keep all my left over, clean up,  paper towels in the studio because you never know when they'll come in handy. I decided I would audition them on this piece. Cheese cloth was another experiment & I really love the effect.

There's Beauty in Rust

Spoiler alert...the current, quarterly GOE challenge is a picture of a rusty grate. Not just any grate, it has to be something with this particular grate. It's in a golf course in Mexico & it's surrounded by grass. 

 Isn't it beautiful....I thought so but I just didn't know how to do it and make my piece interesting. I've actually been pondering it for 2 months & still nothing was coming. So I did some more intense study on the internet & decided that I was going to schedule Saturday for my encaustic bench. Now here's the spoiler part...those who don't want to see it until the reveal...don't look...all of those who would like to see it...check it out on the read more.

Mah Jong ATC

This is an ATC (Artist Trading Card) that I made for an exchange that the Surface Design group organized. The background was actually a piece that I made in the previous open studio get together. I've been trying for quite some time to get a particular effect using paper in which I have not been successful in achieving. If you follow my blog, you will know what I'm referring to. It was, once again, a Quilting Art article. I started off with canvas that I gesso'd and painted. Then added torn papers, Sudoku, in this case and then laid distressed cheese cloth over it. Dried it with a heat gun...because I'm very impatient and then added more paint. I didn't like the piece and it sat in the corner of my studio for months but when I broke it down into smaller sections, I ended up liking it much better. It's very ironic how I had trouble doing ATC's in the beginning because of how small they are and now I'm quite happy to break it down into a manageable piece. At least mentally breaking it down. The Lapis beads were purchased when I was on vacation in Turkey and they seemed to be the only beads I had that matched the blue denim paint. And I have a lot of beads....a LOT!!

Peace Out

This peace has been worked on over a period of many months. I would do a little bit and then leave it to manifest in my brain until the next step would come. As usual the steps would come to me slowly through my dreams. Then I would get the idea and rush to the studio to do that step before it got lost in the abyss of daily life. Over the months I had it on the corner of my table, as it patiently waited...putting beads on it...laying similar colours on it until something would click. Now I'm still waiting for a hanging idea. I've played with wood and antler but everything just seems a little too heavy. So I'll have to wait until the perfect item arrives in my studio. But for now that's all it's waiting for.

I began with a piece of cotton batting and started layering wool rovings to it.

As you can see, it's nothing at this point but a dogs breakfast.

Then I took some yarn that's in my stash and started layering it.

I had selected yarns that I though would look good together and I would add them by twisting and bunching them together so that I would get a very raised nobly effect. At this point, I'm still not sure this is working.

This is the stage that I stopped in order to get a true feeling for it. I knew that it needed more but I just had to let it manifest before moving on.

Unfortunately I didn't continue to take pictures of the next stages. I decided that I would add some hand stitched elements to it but because of the nobly effect, anything too small would have gotten lost in the yarn.

This is a more detail shot of the hand stitching. After the hand stitching step, once again the piece was laid to rest until the next step arrived. During that time I was reading a book called "Hot Textiles" and decided that I needed to have some Xpandaprint. When the Xpandaprint came in it sat on the shelf waiting for me to be brave enough to try it. Then one night the next step came & I was in the studio. I got the felting machine back out and felted some areas more deeply in order to have a place to add the Xpandaprint. Xpandaprint is a type of puff medium. When you heat it, it puffs up. So I heated the areas, then painted over it. Then, I added Dorlands wax medium on top of the painted medium, added beads and suddenly "Peace Out" was born.

This is just a another detailed shot.

This piece is called "Peace Out" because of a very good friend of mine. Most families go through very tough times in their lives with their children...some are worse than others...but it's a time when all we pray for is peace. One time, this friend, signed off her email to me as "peace out" and I thought it was just so funny...so raw...and this piece just seemed to name itself as it developed. Some symbols just seem to evoke a sense of peace and for me it's Buddha...don't know why...can't explain it...I have one in my garden as a meditation, reflective spot and I also have one in my home.

Business Reply Mail

Yesterday I spent some time in the studio after a sleepless night dreaming of encaustic. I turned on the hot plate to heat while I started playing with some collected papers. I had just received my first issue of Cloth Paper Scissors the night before and read the article about Daniella Wolfe...an encaustic artist. Of course, what always falls out of the magazines but those business reply's for you to order more magazines. So I decided to collect them and that was the beginning of the collage. So here's to Cloth Paper Scissors and Quilting Arts Magazine.

Encaustic Wax, collected papers, Business Reply Mail cards from both Cloth Paper Scissors & Quilting Arts Magazine. Potato bag mesh, sequin waste, thread goo in assorted colours and some mosaic tiles.

Teenage Head

I had fun making this piece a couple of weeks ago. I was a little nervous about it so I just left it in the studio for a bit. After a weekend barbeque, I've been encouraged to post it on my blog. I've been collecting computer parts for months because I just love the colours and the shine. I know very little about computers but it's been fun developing ideas. My family  has been helping me collect pieces and I really loved this one that my son brought home. I put it on top of the pile because I just knew I had to use it in something. My husband brought home the copper wire that was like a ball of hair actually, it was so fine. The copper mesh was from my father. It's actually slug netting and he uses it in some of his floral designs. Too beautiful for slugs if you ask us. Then I added the Moosehead bottle cap and dissected cell phone parts...from a moment of teenage rage.

I started with a board that I painted with a copper oil stick. Then I coated the board with encaustic wax.  I then layered a painted and distressed dryer sheet on top of the board and built the design with the bits I had around my studio.

Art Cloth ATC

This is another try at the Quilting Arts Magazine article on Art Cloth. The Surface Design Tribe had an open studio where we could work on whatever we wanted and see what everyone else was working on at the same time. I made a couple of pieces of art cloth but I must admit that once again...I was not happy with the results. So I brought my pieces home and stacked them with the others until I decide if I'm painting the whole damn thing a solid colour again. It's been a very busy few weeks for me and I haven't completed anything to post except a surface design block...that I forgot to take pictures of. So last night it's crunch time and I need an ATC (Artist Trading Card) for the Group of Eight exchange tonight. So I was rummaging through my stack with my little ATC frame and I really liked this little section of the cloth. So I cut it up, stitched the edges, covered it in Dorland's encaustic wax and added the pen nib. Appleman...my husband...would be proud.

 So this once again started with the article...piece number 4...and once again it looks nothing like the picture offered in the article....which is extremely frustrating to me. I started with canvas that I randomly painted blue & a brownish mix. Then I added the Japanese newspaper that I picked up in Hong Kong...so maybe it's Chinese...not sure. Then I added the stressed cheese cloth and painted the whole piece with watered down white glue. I added molding paste and painted it with a bronze Lumiere paint. Added a little bit of rusted orange Lumiere and put it aside because it looked like crap. I just love the texture but I just can't seem to get the colouring the way I want it. I like this little section and the pen nib added better interest than beads in this case...at least I thought so. So I guess I'm destined to try art cloth #5...I'll keep you posted. Oh and I should mention that one of the GOE (Group of Eight) members told me to keep a little rubbing alcohol in my studio to take some of the extra paint away...I still don't have the alcohol but I will definitely give it a try when I have some...just a thought.

Money Tree

I have been working on this piece for about a week. It started off by my seeing a YouTube video called "Dirty Pages". I haven't painted very much so I'm trying to learn as much as I can about it and YouTube tutorials seem to be where it's at. I've been using my oil paints for the background and it does take quite a bit of time to dry...hence the reason for it taking so long to finish. I've also learned that working on paper is very different than working on wood.
Once the background was done I had no idea what I could do with it and I thought that something copper would really stand out...but what copper? I was pulling threads, beads, and then I pulled out copper mesh that my father had given me for my stash. That lead me to my husband's studio where I knew he had just finished some electrical work and had stripped the covering off the wire. Voila...copper wire. I pounded the wire flat...came back to my studio and was still thinking...what next. I laid them on the piece, pulled fabric and then the thought of pounding pennies came to mind. Back to my husband's studio and pounded the pennies. Then I layered with encaustic. I actually put too much wax down and had to do a lot of scraping and polishing.
I'm having trouble taking pictures of encaustic because of the sheen. Oh well, I guess I have to learn some photography as well. Any suggestions?

Bench Break In

Today I was able to finally break in my new painting/encaustic bench. I thought I would post a picture so that there was a before and after.
I finished the day by only burning 2 body parts...my thumb and forearm. I guess I'm still getting used to the setup. The burn on my arm is remarkably similar to the good old days of curling irons.

Spring has Sprung

So now I had to get down and start the challenge and just forget about the damn size of that fabric...I was running out of time. I still didn't know what I was going to do. I just knew that I wanted a play on the words rather than the usual spring stuff...so I was playing with my watch and clock parts and pulling on this spring, when it sprung out of it's tiny home...in the shape of an "S". So then I started thinking about what I could do with the S in my design and came up with the spelling of "Spring". I left it on my desk and whenever my family walked by it, they would comment on how much they liked the layout. So off to the encaustic bench I went, with my LITTLE square of snow dyed fabric and my watch parts spelling out "Spring".

Encaustic Gear Play

One of the groups I'm involved in is the Group of Eight Fibre Artists and they're quarterly challenge was chosen as "Spring has Sprung". We were given a square of snow dyed fabric and we had to make something with that theme. I was completely paralyzed with the size of the square and didn't want to ruin it and not be able to get another piece, so I decided that I wanted to do samples in order to see what I could do within the encaustic medium and playing with paints to try and match up the colours to the snow dyed piece...well the piece took on a life of it's own and was done before I had even used the fabric. So my 'Spring has Sprung' challenge will have to follow.

This piece started with canvas taped down to my work surface. I added encaustic wax medium, oil paint, thread and clock gears. Then I stitched it to a quilted background and voila...Encaustic Gear Play was born.