Alternative Printmaking Report #5

Photo Encaustic

Thus far, in Reports 1-4, I searched for ways to make my photographs into more unique artwork, and have not come up with anything that has intrigued me enough to want to pursue or learn about in depth. But now I have now started to experiment with photo encaustic. Photo what? What is photo encaustic?

Encaustic art is the use of wax and various pigments to create wax-based paintings. Photo encaustic is combining photography with encaustic art. This can become a very deep and involved field that ultimately combines very advanced encaustic techniques with photography; where the photograph becomes a piece of the encaustic artwork. But like most things, it is best to start with the basics. And so I have started with the most basic combination there is for combining photography and encaustic work.

I suspect the most basic photo encaustic project one can undertake is to mount your photograph to a sturdy support and coat it with wax. To learn how to do this I signed up for an online photo encaustic course and learned how to prepare a three-dimensional raw wood artist’s panel and bond a photo to it. This part turned out to be fairly easy to accomplish. One can buy such panels relatively cheaply. The sides of the panel can be painted, your print is then bonded to the surface of the panel with an archival adhesive, and the edges of the print are then trimmed to the exact size of the panel using a sharp blade. Overall, these preparatory steps are petty straightforward.

Then comes the part that really requires the course and background knowledge, which is working with the wax. It does become somewhat involved, but I can honestly say that, unlike the image transfer process, I did actually enjoy the work. In short, the process involves melting the wax (which is actually a mixture of beeswax and damar resin) at a safe temperature, brushing it onto the mounted photo, and fusing the wax to the photo using a small butane or propane torch (an electric heat gun can also be used). Additional wax layers are then painted on and each layer is again fused.

I was able to successfully do this after watching the course and produced this finished piece:

The cloudiness is related to the fact that wax is not transparent. This adds a texture to the translucent piece and I am told that this is how the finished piece is ‘supposed’ to look. But the problem is that, while I don’t mind a bit of translucency ( as opposed to transparency), I personally find this degree of cloudiness objectionable.

And this will lead to my next experiment (and will be the subject of the next Alternative Printing Report). You see, I spoke with two people about these results, the course teacher and the salesperson at my local art store who, as it tuns out, is an encaustic artist. And they came up with two suggestions to try.

The first is to try Art Resin, which is a hard solid resin that is reportedly transparent, instead of wax. This means that the piece will no longer be encaustic, but it may give me the result I am imagining. It also is an absolute finish, as hard resin does not allow for any of the other artistic effects that can be made using the encaustic process. The second suggestion was to use a wax medium with a much higher damar resin content than the one I was using, as this will tend to produce less cloudiness upon drying. I am hopeful that both these ideas will work, while giving somewhat different and hopefully pleasing results.

I will be reporting back on the outcomes of these experiments.

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