Materials
~Hot Cakes encaustic wax ready to use in their own tins (Enkaustikos)
*Color names are listed with projects
~NEW Hot Sticks encaustic wax in a square stick form (Enkaustikos)
~Hot Cakes Large tin of "Wax Medium"
~Hot Cakes Large tin of "Slick Wax" for cleaning the griddle and tools
~A selection of Japanese papers-package SKU #POT12106 (Enkaustikos)
~"Yes" glue
~White acrylic paint and 1" wide flat paintbrush
~A stiff board or shallow wood box to mount encaustic paintings on (as if they
bend the wax may crack)
Tools
~Medium to Large flat pancake griddle with temperature gauge (for many
colors the largest one you can find works best)
~Optional: Anodized aluminum sheet for mono printing
~Natural Hog Hair Bristle & Hake Brushes-one per color is the best
but optional (Enkaustikos)
~Hand held heat tool with various temperatures (mine is traditionally used to
heat embossing powder on paper)
~Tweezers (long handles are best)
~A full roll of paper towels
~A thin round paintbrush
~Pottery scraper tool with wood handle (pictured near bottom of the page)
~Tablet of large paper to protect work surface
~Mini or standard clothes pins (to clip on tin rims to move them
around the griddle)
~Meat or other type of thermometer that can be placed directly on the heated griddle
~A non-porous (doesn't absorb fluid) surface: the back of a cookie sheet or
a foil wrapped piece of cardboard etc. to cool painted papers on
*Enkaustikos products include a huge variety of Hot Cakes and Hot Sticks colors,
Japanese papers and encaustic brushes, as well as an Instructional
DVD and lots more at the:
Basic Instructions
Note: Clean your brushes by wiping excess off on a paper towel, then dipping a
clean brush in Slick Wax, applying it to your griddle, brushng the bristles
back and forth in the heated Slick Wax and wiping on a paper towel again.
Repeat until no color shows. Slick Wax is also used on the griddle itself.
Just brush on the slick wax and wipe with a thick wad of paper towels to
clean up any left over wet wax colors while heat is still on.
1. Set up your work area with your griddle, paint, tools and papers. Place
the chosen Hot Cakes tin colors for the project as well as the aluminum sheet, brushes,
(bristles touching the griddle) to one side of your griddle
and turn the temperature to 175oF.
2. Place Hot Sticks colors next to the griddle on your large paper tablet.
Have a stack of paper towels and extra brushes (if you have them)
close by as well.
3. Tear a sheet of thin Japanese paper around the edges and place it directly
on the griddle. Brush on one thin coat of wax medium using a wide hog hair
or Hake brush. The paper will become translucent. Fuse the wax with a heat
tool. Keep the tool moving across the paper and not too close. On the
griddle draw a solid, quarter size dot of white Hot Sticks. Using a
clean small brush, add some wax medium into the white and mix until the
color looks like a light tint glaze. Mix a dab of one color into the glaze.
Dab random areas of color onto the metal sheet. You can draw directly on the
metal with Hot Sticks also. *I used *White, *Cobalt Violet, *Cobalt Green,
*Cobalt Aqua, *Cadmium Red Medium and *Cadmium Yellow Deep. Lift the paper
with tweezers (being careful not to scratch your griddle surface) and place
face down onto the metal sheet, then lift paper away slowly so the paint
doesn't smear. Fuse the wax with a heat tool. Remove paper using tweezers
and set on a non-porous surface to cool.
4. To add interest to the collage, dip brush in a little Cobalt Blue and make a
small puddle on the griddle. Draw a large dot of white with a Hot Stick on
the griddle next to the blue and mix together. Paint a random patch of lt.
blue onto the background. Fuse with heat gun. Add a patch of wax medium on
another plain area of the background. Remove from heat and place on
non-porous surface. When cool to the touch, use the rippled end of the grater tool
to impress designs in the wax, both horizontally then vertically, side by side.
While on the non-porous surface, add a layer of *Cadmium Red wax (Hot
Cakes) over the imprinted area. Fill the grooves well. Allow to cool. Using
a potttery scraping tool (shown below with wood handle), scrap off the top
excess layer of red wax so it remains in the design indentations only.
6. Print out two dragonfly clip art line drawings and the word "SOAR" in large
letters on regular printer paper. Cut around the designs loosely leaving
some white area around the edges. Place the dragonflies only the griddle and
apply a thin coat of wax medium. Fuse the wax with a heat tool.
7. Choose a glaze color and brush right over one entire dragonfly design
with the color tint. The black lines will show through the glaze. Repeat
with a second glaze color for the second dragonfly. Fuse the wax with a heat
tool. Brush a layer of wax medium over the dragonflies being care not to
let them slide on the paper. Remove from griddle and allow to cool.
8. Cut out the dragonflies with small pointed scissors just around the outside
of the black lines. Place them face down on griddle, apply wax medium to the
backs and then place in postiion on background paper. Tear around the word
SOAR and place face down on griddle. Apply a thin coat of wax to the back,
pick up and place onto background. Brush a layer of wax medium over the
dragonflies and the word and fuse the wax with a heat tool. Remove from
heat. To add texture I pounced an angled small brush around the word with
white wax paint a few times to build up the height. I lightly
fused the paper surface.
10. Extra Touches: While the paper was off the heat and on the non-porous
surface, I added white to the the left over violet and aqua glaze and
highlighted the dragonfly wings. I carefully carved some swirls into the
background with a lino "V" shaped carving tool on a red handle (pictured
below). It gave the collage motion. I did not fill in the swirls with wax,
but instead just used a thin round paintbrush with the lightened more solid
aqua wax and brushed over the swirls, hap hazardly not solidly. I aso added
a little lt. pink mixture to the "SOAR" outline as I felt it needed a
little color. I fused a quick swipe over the entire collage so as not
to melt or move any lines.
10. The last step was to glue the paper onto a stiff substrate. I had a shallow
wood box that worked well. I white-washed the box (with acrylic paint with a
few drops of water) and secured the encaustic collage with fast drying tacky glue.
Here are a few images showing other techniques and styles of encaustic paitning you can try.
Other Techniques
There are many encaustic and mixed media techniques. Here are some of the
tools (right to left) I had that worked well to carve into the wax
(red handle and lino carving tips); impress interesting designs (long handle
small grater); scrape off top layers of wax colors to reveal the colors
beneath) a pottery ribbon tool (scraper).
Metal cutter shapes and other found metal objects (gears and cogs) can be make
intersting impressions in the wax as well. You may even find some in your
catch-all drawer. Just make sure to keep these items for wax use only and NOT
for food once used for encaustics.
This is another version of my dragonfly encaustic collage. The top left designs
were made by simply pressing the grater, protruding side down into the
cooled wax background (placed on the non-porous surface). I then brushed on
*Alizarin Crimson and *Cobalt Violet wax, allowed the colors to cool and
used the scraper to scrape away the excess wax around and in between the dots.
I also used the carving tool to carve around the dragonflies to accent them
and to carve the word 'SOAR'. I then added coordinating colors of wax
fairy thick, with an angled, brush to fill in the dragonfly lines and
black wax for the word. Then the scraper was used to scrape away the excess
wax beside the carved lines. The tricky part is to fuse the carved lines
without allowing them to melt and run. Just a quick fuse on low with a heat
tool will do the trick.
I added a very unique handmade piece of torn paper to the collage also
with clear wax under but not over the paper. I wanted to keep its
natural fiberous look.
