Technique-a-aplooza Part 1

After a day spent working alongside one of my favorite local artists in her studio, I'm starting to understand that my fledging encaustic practice is actually a little further along than I thought. I've had in my head for awhile what I wanted my encaustic work to look like, but kept thinking I didn't have enough knowledge or had never found the right technique for it or even, possibly, that I just didn't possess the necessary talent (and I just heard every other artist reading this go "eeeeeEEEEEEEEE...").

As it turns out, none of those things are true. And doing a survey of my encaustic work to date, there are quite a few pieces I'm very happy with (including the three that now live in other people's homes) that show a reasonable ability to execute a wide variety of techniques; some of these early pieces are almost purely about the techniques themselves. Here are a few for your enjoyment!

Western Starshower
6 x 4 inches
wax and oil paint on wood

Possibly the most straightforward of the techniques is just the application of layered wax, creation of marks in the wax and then infilling with contrasting paint or wax. Western Starshower started as something else entirely. I've always been vaguely dissatisfied with the piece, until one day I turned it upside down and suddenly it made sense. I like the texture and sort of 3D quality of the black hills in the foreground. At the same time, though, I don't think this is one that will ever make it to the sale table; it's just a little bit too rough.

Bengali
3 x 5 inches
wax and oil on canvas panel

Bengali is another piece that began as one thing and became another. There are so many techniques in this tiny piece I almost don't know where to begin talking about it. It's got layered overpainting, scraping away, "buttering" with the tacking iron, and a final layer of gold oilbar highlight. I have to say the addition of the gold is what kind of turned it from "nothing" into "something." I'll probably frame this one and put it up in my house somewhere. I haven't been able to make a photo of it that did it justice.

Buttery
5 x 7 inches
wax on encaustic board

Misty Garden
8 x 8 inches
wax on wood panel

Speaking of buttering, Buttery is tacking-iron process run a little bit amok. This is purely overpainting and then pulling back the wax to varying depths with the tacking iron, revealing the different colors beneath. Again, I'm a fan of texture that implies 3D rather than 2D--the wax "sits up" in waves, the colors surprise, the form feels at once chaotic and elegant. In the same style is the much larger Misty Garden. It's less tactile, a little bit more glassy, but still with the technique of using the tacking iron to butter back layers of color to reveal unexpected layers of color underneath. On this one, though, I've also used the tacking iron to "style" the wax colors into patterns and waves.

Winter Trees
3 x 5 inches
wax and inkjet print
on encaustic board

Leaf
3 x 5 inches
wax and pastel rubbings
on encaustic board

I'm not a big fan of image transfer processes in encaustic; most of the work I've seen that uses image transfer feels too much like a graphic design or collage project to me, and I've never had any illusions about being interested in working in either of those styles. But there can be something magically about the inclusion of printed images in this work if handled with a slightly different point of view. My two favorites in this style are Winter Trees and Leaf. Each uses a very different technique. Winter Trees involved embedding an inkjet print on rice paper into the wax; Leaf also features embedded designs on rice paper, but instead of an inkjet print, I made  multiple pastel rubbings of the leaf in different colors and carefully layered those to make the final piece. A little bit of oil paint was used to emphasize highlights and details.

untitled
9 x 12 inches
wax on clay board

I had the good fortune to know a number of extraordinary painters in grad school, and what they did seemed like magic to me; I've never painted and felt pretty confident that I couldn't ever create anything that looked like it had come off the end of a brush held by Lisa or Gail or Elise or Jenn, Mo or Anastasia or Nora. These artists still amaze me, and I'm not shy about saying they are all my inspirations when it comes to encaustic. This last piece is the closest to what I want to be as an encaustic artist, and rather than my previous assumption that I just probably didn't have the ability to create work like that, it turns out it was just another technique, combined with a tool problem. Some thought, some luck and the proper tool are what helped me produce this piece, which doesn't have a title yet. But creating this was so satisfying (and surprising), it defies description.

I have in my head now what I need to do to continue to produce work like this, the trick will be to keep working and be willing to fail. That's a good lesson both for art and life in general.

No Expectations: Giving the Inner Art Critic the Week Off

When was the last time you made art without the contraints of expectations? Without an idea of "where it would go," without any reference to the "right" techniques and approaches, without a "goal" in mind? Do you remember the high of unanticipated success? The way you were able to appreciate things purely, without picking apart tiny flaws or disappointing results here and there? The energy and pure fun of letting the medium work you instead of the other way around?

I'm in the middle of an explosion of this kind of artwork, taking enormous pleasure in my results, appreciating them purely on an "oh that's COOL" kind of level. I know, in the back of my head, that this means something; but right now, I don't feel a need to know exactly what.



Alstromeria
Hipstamatic App, CAMERAtan App
and iPhone 3

 It started with encaustic, and continues with it, to a certain extent. I have a lot of experiments going on, but I'm running low on materials so I'm being a little less abandonned with it at the moment. Meanwhile, a few days ago a good friend and fellow photographer reminded me how much fun it is to goof around with my iPhone and its photo apps. We share a particular fascination with an app called Hipstamatic, which approximates a huge host of different film, flash and lens types, mimicking all kind of classic and cult cameras and shooting techniques. (I blogged about Hipstamatic back in June 2010.) We're also both very serious fine art photographers--we both own big honking Nikon DSLRs with all the bells and whistles and know how to use them, along with the usual selection of analog photo equipment in various formats, all of which we are able to command and ride like tired mules.

The Sky Overhead
Hipstamatic App and iPhone 3

Not surprisingly, then, the thing we both like the best about Hipstamatic is its "random" setting--you fire up the app, shake the phone, and a random combination of film, lens and flash fall into place; the only choice left to you is whether or not to "fire" the flash. You don't know what you've gotten until you make the photo and the image "develops." It's a little like Russian roulette with a camera phone. If you are just shooting randomly it's wonderful, but if you're responding to something specific that's making you want to shoot the scene in front of you (like color or shadow or contrast), you might find that thing negated by the random combinations.

Interestingly enough, though, the random mix shot often finds something in the scene in front of you that goes beyond what you saw and responded to with your eyes. And the one thing that seems consistent with every Hipstamatic combination is that it seems to make the most mundane things extraordinary, and infuses the images with a kind of aura that can only be described as otherworldly. The walkway in front of my house becomes a magical portal; a pretty blue sky with fluffy clouds takes on an ethereal monochrome glow.

Path
Hipstamatic App and iPhone 3

I spent a few hours playing with Hipstamatic and making images, then playing with other iPhone filter apps and manipulating them even further. The best thing about it was, I wasn't thinking. I was selecting a filter, hitting "apply" and saying "hey, I like that!" My favorite app for this is a wacky little thing called CAMERAtan. Its effects, available in three different patterns, have names like "Umeboshi" and "Latte." Even better, it also has a "random" option in each pattern. It's a wonderful time-killer and generates some wonderful results.

My other recent obsession, after decades of repeating in a robotic fashion "I am not a painter,"  is oil painting. I started out smearing oil paint on panels and wax as part of my encaustic endeavors; now I'm smearing it on canvases and even sometimes using a brush. I know almost nothing about oil painting, so I'm reacting 100% to what I see when the brush loaded with paint hits the canvas, and I'm learning how to control the brush enough to vary the effect. I'm working very very small right now, 3x5-inch canvases and canvasboard, a couple of 6x9's.

Earth
oil on canvas
3x5 inches

I don't know whether what I'm doing looks as cool as I think it does; it's entirely nonrepresentational and abstract, but it has feeling and motion in it, and it's clearly what I need to be doing right now. I'm almost always my own worst critic, but for the moment, I'm giving the critic the week off, and just enjoying doing things that aren't planned to death and then dissected because of my perception of their shortcomings.

Fire
oil on canvas
3x5 inches

Waveform
oil and encaustic on birch panel
8x8 inches




Ground (in progress)
oil on canvas panel
6x9 inches

 

Deep Analog

I've had a lot of ideas over the last few days, despite being sick (or maybe because I'm sick and I'm not actually leaving the house for anything other than feeding the horse), and I've gotten several new pieces into production. I am working on probably six different things right now; they're in various stages and represent a huge range of techniques, approaches, concepts, and goals. Encaustic is one of those artistic pursuits that involves a lot of waiting, interspersed with periods of hyperactivity ... kind of like chemical (as in, old school analog) photographic printing, actually, which is another one of my favorite things to do. One piece I loved, then ruined, then saved, then ruined again, but that's okay--I have a pretty good idea of how to re-save it, and because I'm working in encaustic, re-saving is in fact possible. Encaustic is kind of magical in how it permits the artist to undo what's been done up to a certain point; aside from oil painting, very few working media have this characteristic, and it's a quality I as a rank beginner really appreciate.

Even though I've always been primarily a photographer, I'm having trouble finding a way to combine my images with encaustic that feels "right" to me. I am still in the early stages of this investigation, and there are so many variables that it's mind-boggling. Slowly I'm lurching toward something, although it's still a process heavily in the "trial and error" phases.

More appealing to me, as you'll already know if you're one of the 2.3 regular readers of this blog, is the combination of oil paint with encaustic. I am not painter and never have been; I can't make a decent line with a brush on canvas, but for some reason using my fingers to apply oil paint onto surfaces or wax and then applying more wax (or more paint) is incredibly fulfilling. The paint, especially if you're using cheap oils, does amazing things when you fuse it into the wax; the pigment and oil separates somewhat and the liquid quality of the wax as it heats lets the paint move and flow into strange and interesting patterns and pathways. Higher quality oils will still run with the flow of overfused, liquid wax, but resist the interesting separation that creates such odd patterns within the painted sections. So I am using a blend of high quality and student-grade oils, with the cheap stuff where I want interesting scumbling and patterns and the better stuff where I want the paint to maintain its integrity when it is fused with the wax.

So far my favorite surface is a raw birch panel made specifically for use in art. I like being able to see the grain of the wood through the wax and feel the texture, and there is also something appealing in the idea that I'm using a host of organic materials in this process: pigmented oils, beeswax, wood, natural bristle brushes. (Certainly some of these organic materials can be wildly toxic, but that's nature for you.) And I'm also using my hands a lot, because that just seems to feel right. When you get right down to it, I have gone deep analog with my artmaking, and at the moment, it's incredibly satisfying.

Here are a few works in progress which I like, in various stages of development:


working title: Pink
Encaustic and oil on acrylic panel


This acrylic panel is transparent, so it will be interesting to see what it looks like when I remove the backing. I think I will probably apply one final overcoat of medium and overfuse to a smooth glasslike surface, then buff to a high shine.

working title: Rorshach
Encaustic and oil on cardboard canvas
panel

 This piece started out as a pure experiment, but now I'm thinking it's a study for a much larger piece that I'll produce in the future. (This is 6" x 9".) The  black is applied wax, which I allowed to cool, then added some simple lines with student-grade white oil paint. I then fused the paint into the wax by heating the surface until it liquified. I think to complete this piece I'll add some high-quality crimson oil paint to the line at right, and fuse lightly to preseve the integrity.



working title: Woodflow
Encaustic and oil paint on wood panel

 This last piece I feel is almost finished, although it needs one more thing ... I am not sure what that thing might be. I enjoy being able to see the grain of the wood through the paint, and the way the white paint (the student-grade paint) has separated a bit and started spreading in the middle of the panel. You can see here how the gold paint (artist quality) retained its integrity even though it was fused at the same time and to the same degree as the white.

I know there are a lot of little details in this new artistic practice that I need to get better on, like cleaning my brushes and paying better attention to safety details. Although really, I've spent so much of my life up to my elbows in black and white photo chemicals, if I'm going to be poisoned by something there's a good chance I already have been. And I might one day learn how to actually deliver oil paint to my surfaces with a brush. But right now this slap-dash, experimental, deep analog place I'm in feels just right to me.

Looking At Process

In tandem with my last post, I thought I should offer myself and the 2.3 regular readers of my blog a little roundup of the encaustic practices and processes I'm gravitating towards. This is, obviously, not going to be an all-inclusive list, and in reality it's just a little reminder to myself of the techniques I've tried that seemed to "work" for me very quickly. There are plenty of others that I imagine I'll find more appealing once I become better at them.

Here's the short list:

* Using paper to provide color. A sheet of really interestingly-colored paper used as background (either across the whole surface or in a strategic part of it) adds controlled color and brightness. This works best when I'm not planning to put a lot of layers of medium or other colors on top of the paper; the added wax soaks into the paper and dulls the colors or makes it take on the colors of whatever is layered beneath it. If you're using colored wax underneath the paper and planning for this effect, however, it can yield quite interesting results.

* Stamping on paper and integrating this into the image. Can either be a small piece of the image or the full background.

* Applying oil paint on the surface with my hands before augmenting it with pigmented wax and clear medium.

* Applying oil paint on the wax itself with my hands, and "sealing" it by fusing. I can't paint on canvas with a brush, but for some reason I can paint on wax with my fingers.

* Mixing up the application of wax and medium to the surface, so that some areas have wax and other areas are bare down to the surface (usually painted).

* Very simple straight carving into the wax, overfilling with an accent color, and scraping back to find the line.

* Moving pigmented wax around by overfusing it and letting it run on the panel.

* Using heat on a wax-dipped brush to spread pigment thinly.

* Adding scrapings of different colored waxes to the surface of pieces and expanding them in fusing.

* Overfusing generally.

* Burnishing the finished pieces to a glasslike shine.

* Creating diminsionality with a build up of layers of wax.

I haven't yet figured out how to use my photographic images with encaustic ... that's one of those things that I can already anticipate needs to be a bit thought out. The image and the wax have to make sense together, t enhance each other in order to make a cohesive statement. I'm working on this, though, and I don't think it will be long before I hit on an approach that makes me happy. I have a feeling I might enjoy working with colored inks also, and much more translucent colors. So far I've only used bristle brushes, but I'm reading about artists who use foam brushes, pouring techniques, and splatter approaches to distribute wax on the surfaces they use. In addition, there's a whole world of surfaces that I am anxious to try, and my investigations of those will most likely change the way I work.

I'm glad to have found this medium. There is something about working in it that feels right to me, in the same way photography and video did at the beginning, but also includes the hands-on aspect that I find so appealing about book arts. Maybe I did actually always want to be a painter ... with encaustic, it feels like maybe I am.

Looking Past Process

I'm one of those people who just can't stand next to their own work at a show. And if it's a solo show, I'll kind of slink around trying to look like I'm paying attention to what people are saying without really paying attention to what people are saying. I think this is fairly common; it's not that I don't like to talk about my work or that I can't talk about my work, I just don't like listening to what other people are saying about it. I've heard some weird comments about my work (one woman once said "It's too bad they're not airbrush.") and some vaguely dumb comments about my work (one guy once said "I just kind of don't like things that are out of focus."), but no one's ever said anything really bad about it. I just become nervous about what people respond to, and how they respond; it feels as if I'm evesdropping on something personal. And actually, that's not a bad thing.

I recently put some more images of encaustic work up on Facebook, and that apparently got a lot of people to look at the whole album. And people started leaving comments and noting their favorites. No one said anything bad, because my friends wouldn't do that, but I was a little bit surprised at which pieces particular people seemed to like.

The first issue is that my favorites, which I consider the most in the style I think I'd like to follow, got very little commentary. A couple of others, which I do consider successful, got some very positive responses. I have one artist friend in particular whose work I just love and I admit that I have her paintings in my head when I'm making encaustic work--for some reason I have this idea that I might be able to approach in wax the magic that she makes in acrylic. Interestingly, the work that she responded to most positively was the piece that to my mind was the furtherest away from her own style of working.

But that got me thinking about what  people were really commenting on, and really seeing. The specific comments were about content and meaning--what the image was about, and what it said to them--not about the colors or forms or approach. At the end of the day, that's really what I want. When people don't see the process but instead see a message, specifically a message that seems tailored to them, that's when the artist has truly done his or her job.

And it's also illuminated what's so frustrating to me about the work I'm doing now; I'm mired in process. Because I don't have very much experience with encaustic, I don't know the impact of different approaches and techniques and I don't really know how things will look. So I have to go very slowly, and instead of being able to let the medium speak, I'm still working at how to understand it at all.

Sometimes I can enjoy the idea of pure experimentation, but it's so frustrating when I start to see a direction and then I flub it up with inexperience or some technique doesn't turn out the way I thought it would. And there are so many more processes and practices I've yet to try. But I'm so anxious to find my voice in this medium and make things, wonderful things that speak to people, and get them out into the world. I don't think I was like this with photo or video or even installation. Maybe I need a mentor. Or maybe I just need to keep going, until eventually I can as the artist look past the process and see the meaning inherent in my practice of it.