Encaustic Works for 2010 Lake Oswego Festival of Arts

Here are my two pieces for the Lake Oswego Festival of Arts show taking place June 25-June 27, 2010 in Lake Oswego, Oregon. Website is here.

"Cabbage #1"

"Begin Anywhere"

The right third of the painting turned out quite differently than I had imagined. I originally put down various colors of dots, then layered with more colors. When I scraped back, they did not please me. I added more color and stripes and that did not work either. I left it for a week and realized I wasn't getting the industrial abstract look I wanted. I added organic elements in the form of pen and pastel on mulberry rice paper fused to the picture with clear encaustic medium.

I had also planned to do a whimsical 3D work called "View from my (pretend) Beach house." That one will have to wait.

At first, I had a great time working on the pictures for the show. Then I hit the wall when I realized they just weren't what I had pictured in my mind. I spend an awful lot of time thinking and reading about art, but not that much time actually creating art.

I had to remind myself of the quote from Martha Beck that I wrote about here. Basically, it says if you want to be good at something, you need to do the work. I really haven't done that much encaustic painting since last year's show. I've taken a couple of life drawing classes and sketch on a regular basis, but I haven't produced any full size paintings. So, remember, to get better, keep doing!

Finally, the stars align...

I managed to clean up my basement studio space enough to actually start working on some projects, I'm caught up with work enough (sorta) to take a weekend off, it's beautiful out and the show deadline is next Sunday. In addition to planting flowers and visiting the Farmer's Market, I worked on some encaustic panels.


Here's a panel that has been painted on the sides and taped. Then I fuse a couple layers of encaustic layers to the surface.



I added alizarin red, titanium white and dots in R&F Cadmium Green Light, R&F Bronze, red.




To the red, I added a layer of bronze, then a layer of R&F King's Blue encaustic paint. I plan on scraping back the blue. In the center stripe, I used a paper towel to dab on shellac and 3 colors of Jacquard's Pearl-Ex powdered pigment, then lit it on fire. (Fire, fire, fire! - Too much fun.) Actually, I didn't put enough shellac on at first - it seemed to need a layer instead of drops.




This is the begnning of a big cabbage. I really love the look of a nice cabbage.



Hmm - what will these turn out to be? Bob promised to put them together for me. More later!