Delving Into Photo-Encaustic

I have completed my on-line beginners course in the art of photo-encaustic (combining photography with encaustic, or hot wax painting). I have really been bitten by the bug and love the idea of combining my photography with other modalities, which in addition to wax painting includes the use of oil paints, pigment sticks, oil pastels, dry pigments etc., to make three dimensional works while getting my hands a little dirty. I have signed up for some more advanced courses on the topic as well.

There are three main techniques (at least) in which photography can be combined with encaustic. These include the following:

• Mounting your photograph onto a board (masonite is the cheapest) or a cradled wooden panel (more expensive, but better looking and a bit easier to work with) and then coating with molten wax. The surface can be made smooth or textured. You can then enhance the photo with any type (as long as it is encaustic compatible) of pigment, much like hand coloring a photograph.

• Printing on tissue paper and then taking a multi-colored wax/pigment background that you have constructed and embedding the tissue paper into the background and coating it with clear wax. The absorption of the wax by the paper makes the white (non-printed area) visually disappear into the wax, which can then be enhanced with various pigments if you so choose.

• Preparing a multi-colored wax/pigment background and then, using any of a number of photo transfer methods, transferring the ink from the print onto the wax followed by enhancement as you so desire.

These three techniques can be combined and layered within the piece. Physically layered, not Photoshop layered :)

What you end up with is a truly unique 3-D multi-media piece, though I will be the first to say that there is a moderate learning curve both to handling the wax as well as to the painting with pigment part. But I have slowly been getting better. The final product is typically not displayed under glass, but, rather, in a floater frame, much like a canvas print. If the piece is on a cradled wood panel you need not even use a floater frame if you would prefer not to. You can simply paint the side panels and hang/display the panel itself.

I am demonstrating here a piece that was a failure per se, because I was attempting to learn the tissue paper technique. Alas, at the time, I had no tissue paper (some is on the way) so I printed on a very thin inkjet paper, but apparently not thin enough, as the paper did not become nearly invisible once embedded. So I made the best of the situation and hid the paper edges with pigments and ended up with something that is quite different than I had planned. It is quite dark and a bit creepy, not at all like most of the work I do, but I just followed where it took me.

© Howard Grill

The finished image.

© Howard Grill

This is the original wax background I had constructed before I realized that the white part of the paper I printed on wasn’t invisible in the wax.

To save it, I had to hide the edges of the paper and then try to make it into something completely different than I had anticipated.

As I delve more deeply into this and continue to improve, I will show more examples of what I am able to produce along the way. If anyone has any interest in or questions about what the process entails, I would be glad to either answer or write some more detailed posts.

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