Encaustic Workshop.

Mum and I were at Jemma Derbyshire's Encaustic Painting Workshop today and really enjoyed it :) Neither of us were feeling too great but it was such a good class (Jemma's always are) that we totally got into it.

Encaustic painting, also known as hot wax painting, involves using heated beeswax (you can add different coloured pigments to it - here we had one yellow and one blue) which you spread over your surface and then paint on top of with a mixture of oil paints and wax paste (the wax paste is beeswax and turpentine). It dries faster than just oil paint on it's own but remains wet enough to work at it over a few days.

It was a revelation! I really enjoyed dragging the paint over the wax, building it up and scratching back into it. I'd love to do more of it but it is pretty expensive to get all the materials and also making up the wax paste (the wax and turps are heated together at a v high temperature to make the paste) is possibly the most dangerous thing I could attempt to do, esp considering my tendency to set fire to my kitchen with just toast or veg nevermind flammable spirits...
However....if theres a less incendiary way of making this up I might have to get a few bits and pieces and have a go ;)

Todays blip is just my card with the wax brushed on and scraped flat ready to paint on. I'll blip what I produced over the next couple of days. I'm actually quite pleased with the results - and you don't hear me say that very often!