Encaustic Variations In Texture

In my newest encaustic piece, I wanted to experiment with varying textures. I printed the image on a thin Washi paper (Awagami Murakumo) and decided to saturate it in wax using an encaustic monotype technique. An anodized aluminum plate was heated, and molten encaustic medium was then painted onto the plate after which the image was placed print-side down onto the medium. This has a very interesting effect on the paper. It turns it translucent! And I had previously noticed that when putting the translucent paper on a white background the image tends to appear more saturated and three-dimensional.

To get it onto a white background, I took a 12x16 inch cradled wood panel and adhered a piece of white watercolor paper to it. Then, using the same Scotch Repositionable Adhesive, I adhered the waxed print to the white paper background and trimmed the edges flush with the panel. This gave the print a very nice look just as it was, with the wax having soaked into the paper and being very smooth. However, I thought it would be interesting to see what effect I could get by painting wax medium over the brown textured area of the print (it is a texture after all) using a brush. But first I applied several pigments to the print to give it some color variation. This is sort of the equivalent of hand-coloring a photo.

I then painted the encaustic medium onto the textured area and fused it to the image with a heat gun, with extra fusing so that the whiter area in the center of the image would be smoother than the textured brown and orange area around it. I then applied some more pigment to the textured wax and fused it again to produce the finished piece.

I like that the white ‘framed’ portion around the brown-orange texture is smooth, the brown-orange texture has a rough and textured three-dimensionality to it with pigments added, and then the center is smooth again. I think it really adds a sense of dimension to the piece, which only partially comes through when photographing it!

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