Art Instead

Encaustic Process

Encaustic Art – Shan’s current calling: Encaustic Creations

One of my earliest memories of making art is from the 2nd grade. For a whole day we had an Art Fair. (Do we still offer these? I hope so!) Us students would rotate through different classrooms to learn fun, new and simple art and crafts. My favorite classroom was Mrs. Tobin’s where we melted color crayon shavings between sheets of wax paper. I still have my little hearts with the melted pink and red swirls, as bright as they were 50 years ago (wow!). Something about those hard bits of color so simply and wonderfully changing form right before my eyes into a magical design captured by creative soul. Maybe I missed my art career calling way back then. Or maybe it wasn’t meant to be until now. Maybe I had to wait until Encaustic re-introduced itself into the art world (see articles below). And now I am addicted, able to forget all else when I have the paint brush in my hand, thinking only of the melting wax, feeling like a 2nd grader again. I feel more relaxed than ever, closest to doing something that feels right with God and my relationship to something spiritual. I’ve had various passions in my life, but this one feels the closest yet to heaven.

Art Instead of…the alternatives…

I offer to you Encaustic Creations to preserve your memories. The mission of Art Instead is to transform items from major life events into living works of art that will proudly and fondly be displayed in living rooms, on the walls of bedrooms, for these events to be remembered and to offer comfort on a daily basis. Art Instead uses your photos and pictures, precious memorabilia and other physical bits of memories, so important at the time, yet which often end up in boxes in the attic or basement, shoved in the back of closets, drying out in drawers. Maybe this is a wedding photo and you are looking for a dreamy way to display it. Perhaps you have old family photos and documents and a standard glass picture frame just isn’t enough. You can preserve these in a collage under beautiful encaustic wax.

If you’ve had a loved one pass, I offer to you the option of an Encaustic Cremation Creations. With a tiny bit of cremains from a loved one, along with history and remnants of that person’s life, it is my hope and desire to provide loved ones with lasting memories encased in a living piece of encaustic wax art.

See Shipping and Shopping for further details on ordering.

You can also contact Shannon for more conversation on your imagined art piece.

Thank you!

History of Encaustics

What Is Encaustic?

Encaustic is a Greek word meaning “to heat or burn in” (enkaustikos). Heat is used throughout the process, from melting the beeswax and varnish to fusing the layers of wax. Encaustic consists of natural bees wax and dammar resin (crystallized tree sap). The medium can be used alone for its transparency or adhesive qualities or used pigmented. Pigments may be added to the medium, or purchased colored with traditional artist pigments. The medium is melted and applied with a brush or any tool the artist wishes to create from. Each layer is then reheated to fuse it to the previous layer.

History of Encaustic

Encaustic painting is an ancient technique, dating back to the Greeks, who used wax to caulk ship hulls. Pigmenting the wax gave rise to the decorating of warships. The use of encaustic on panels rivaled the use of tempera in what are the earliest known portable easel paintings. Tempera was a faster, cheaper process. Encaustic was a slow, difficult technique, but the paint could be built up in relief, and the wax gave a rich optical effect to the pigment. These characteristics made the finished work startlingly life-like. Moreover, encaustic had far greater durability than tempera, which was vulnerable to moisture. Perhaps the best known of all encaustic work are the Fayum funeral portraits painted in the 1st through 3rd centuries A.D. by Greek painters in Egypt. A portrait of the deceased painted either in the prime of life or after death, was placed over the person’s mummy as a memorial. These are the only surviving encaustic works from ancient times. It is notable how fresh the color has remained due to the protection of the wax.

The 20th century has seen a rebirth of encaustic on a major scale. It is an irony of our modern age, with its emphases on advanced technology, that a painting technique as ancient and involved as encaustic should receive such widespread interest.

Earlier attempts to revive encaustic failed to solve the one problem that had made painting in encaustic so laborious – the melting of the wax. The availability of portable electric heating implements and the variety of tools made the use of encaustic more accessible. Today it is gaining popularity with artists around the world.

Care of Encaustic Art

These paintings are extremely archival, but as with any fine art, care should be given to them. There should be no fear of the work melting in normal household conditions. The wax and resin will not melt unless exposed to temperatures over 150 degrees Fahrenheit. Leaving a painting in a car on a hot day would not be advisable or hanging a painting in front of a window with direct desert-like sun. They are also sensitive to freezing cold temperatures.

Some encaustic colors tend to “bloom” or become cloudy over time. If your painting appears indistinct, simply rub the surface with a soft cloth or nylon stocking. Over time the surface retains its gloss as the wax medium continues to cure and harden for up to 1-3 years.

Encaustic painting

Encaustic painting, also known as hot wax painting, involves using heated beeswax to which colored pigments are added. The liquid or paste is then applied to a surface—usually prepared wood, though canvas and other materials are often used. The simplest encaustic mixture can be made from adding pigments to beeswax, but there are several other recipes that can be used—some containing other types of waxes, damar resin, linseed oil, or other ingredients. Pure, powdered pigments can be used, though some mixtures use oil paints or other forms of pigment.

Metal tools and special brushes can be used to shape the paint before it cools, or heated metal tools can be used to manipulate the wax once it has cooled onto the surface. Today, tools such as heat lamps, heat guns, and other methods of applying heat allow artists to extend the amount of time they have to work with the material. Because wax is used as the pigment binder, encaustics can be sculpted as well as painted. Other materials can be encased or collaged into the surface, or layered, using the encaustic medium to stick them to the surface.

A completely unrelated type of "encaustic painting", not involving wax at all, is found in British ceramics, after Josiah Wedgwood devised and patented the technique in 1769. This was a mixture of ceramic slip and overglaze "enamel" paints used to imitate ancient Greek vase painting, and given a light second firing. Usually the vessel was black and painted in the red of red-figure painting. The technique was copied by other British potteries. Encaustic tiles are not painted at all, but effectively inlaid with contrasting colours of clay for a polychrome pattern.

History

The word encaustic originates from Ancient Greek: ἐγκαυστικός which means "burning in" from ἐν en, "in" and καίειν kaiein, "to burn", and this element of heat is necessary for a painting to be called encaustic.

The wax encaustic painting technique was described by the Roman scholar Pliny the Elder in his Natural History from the 1st Century AD. The oldest surviving encaustic panel paintings are the Romano-Egyptian Fayum mummy portraits from Egypt around 100–300 AD, but was a very common technique in ancient Greek and Roman painting. It continued to be used in early Byzantine icons but was effectively abandoned in the Western Church.

Kut-kut, a lost art of the Philippines, employs sgraffito and encaustic techniques. It was practiced by the indigenous tribe of Samar island around 1600 to 1800. Artists in the Mexican muralism movement, such as Diego Rivera and Jean Charlot sometimes used encaustic painting. The Belgian artist James Ensor also experimented with encaustic.

In the 20th century, painter Fritz Faiss (1905–1981), a student of Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky at the Bauhaus, together with Dr. Hans Schmid, rediscovered the so-called "Punic wax" technique of encaustic painting. Faiss held two German patents related to the preparation of waxes for encaustic painting. One covered a method for treating beeswax so that its melting point was raised from 60 to 100 °C (140 to 212 °F). This occurred after boiling the wax in a solution of sea water and soda three successive times. The resulting harder wax is the same as the Punic wax referred to in ancient Greek writings on encaustic painting Other 20th-century North American artists, including Jasper Johns, Tony Scherman, Mark Perlman, and Fernando Leal Audirac have used encaustic techniques.

Encaustic art has seen a resurgence in popularity since the 1990s with people using electric irons, hotplates and heated styli on different surfaces including card, paper and even pottery. The iron makes producing a variety of artistic patterns easier. The medium is not limited to just simple designs; it can be used to create complex paintings, just as in other media such as oil and acrylic. Although technically difficult to master, attractions of this medium for contemporary artists are its dimensional quality and luminous color.