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Get The Grips With
Encaustic
• Basic Methods 2 -

Content:

  1. Simplified description
  2. Short History
  3. The Basic Method
  4. Advantages
  5. Supports
  6. White Grounds
  7. Brushes & Cleaning
  8. Pigments
  9. Wax
10. Heat & Heating
11. About Heat
12. Additional Tools
13. Burning-in-process
14. Ancient Techniques (extended article)

5. Supports to work on:

You can paint on anything you can think about. Paper, card, card board, canvas, textiles, wood, masonite, hard board, plywood, chip board, stone, clay, any kind of metal, leather, glass, plastic and wax itself. Make up your mind for more of your preferred materials.
Keep in mind that encaustic has a brittle nature. It is best used on rigid supports. They should be of a absorbent nature because the wax must be able to adhere to the surface. If this is not given by nature - use tools to roughen the surface and give it a 'tooth' that the wax can get a 'grip' on it. Or give your support's surface a coat of gesso in the particular areas where you want to apply the colour.

But don't use acrylic gesso because it gives the wax not enough adherence.

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6. White Grounds for Encaustic:

(soon new content)

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7. Brushes & Cleaning:

Your brushes should be made of natural hairs because the synthetic hairs may melt in the working temperature. Don't use your expensive brushes (like pure sables) in the experimental phase - sooner or later you will ruin them in this 'abuse' method. Bristle brushes are the best tools for the all around work. Soft hair brushes can do a glazing or a more detailed work.

You clean your brushes by dipping them into any cheap wax (beside your colours keep one tin with it on your heated 'palette'). This step melts off excess color and you can dip your brush into the next colour. Use the cheap, hot wax as you would do so in oil painting with turpentine. My method is to use one specific brush for a certain colour range (one for reds, one for blues, one for yellows and so on). But you can use one brush for all colours as described earlier.
If you have to de-wax a tool or a surface you can do so by using mineral spirits. After cleaning your brushes in this solvent you can rinse them like other brushes used in oil, acrylic etc. in a lukewarm, soapy water and let them dry natural.

Extra care about solvents:
Don't use any solvents nearby your heating source, because heating a solvent increases its flammability.
Take extra care, that solvents used on heated tools or whatsoever can be very irritating.
Also their toxicity is increased!

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8. Pigments:

If you want to try encaustic buy the basic colours. A set of Cadmium Red, Lemon Yellow and Ultramarine Blue will work fine. If you want to add also Ivory Black and Titanium White to your palette you have to expect more quantity because this colours are commonly sold in 100 grams or even bigger packages. Don't worry - you can use this colours also to make your own acrylics or oils.

Think about mixing secondary from primary colours. If you are not familiar with colour mixing click here for the theory of the 'color wheel'. Many art shops offer small amounts of pigments in 20 or 50 grams. If the pigments are in a paper bag fill them into a small glass jars with a lid. This keeps the pigments free of moisture and humidity. For a beginning don't buy the expensive genuine pigments - in this state of experimenting with the encaustic technique substitutes will work fine, too.

If you feel like working further on in encaustic technique and find out immediately the immense and vast range of possibilities which this medium offers - than you can switch to a better quality of pigments with their reason for use by artists.
click here for everything about pigments.

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9. Wax:

I have tried different kind of waxes. Natural beeswax is yellowish in colour and your mixed paints have mostly also a yellowish tint. Then I switched to bleached & refined beeswax. Its neutral colour suits more my 'personal colour feeling'. But this is a question of taste and the subjects matter.

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10. Heating supports:

A simple metal plate with 4 flat candles underneath made my first heating plate. Two bricks left and right under the metal plate worked well. I also used clean, used food cans to melt the wax. Or you can buy one of this muffin tins with non-stick coatings and 6 or 12 depressions. More sophisticated heating sources are: a portable, temperature controlled pancake griddle, a chafing dish or an electrical frying pan. Many of these things can be found on car boot sales. But keep in mind that you are not using any of this tools again to prepare food after you used them for encaustic techniques.

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11. About Heat:

Beeswax is melting at 65°C (163F), some ready made encaustic paint melts at 72°C (162°F). A good working temperature is about 93°C (200°F). The main point is that your wax is well melted and fluid - their is no need for higher temperatures. If beeswax becomes too hot - 148°C (275°F) it starts to smoke and you can smell a sweet, acrid sence.

Take care: too high temperatures - more than about 93°C (200°F) - can decompose the wax and some of the pigments.

At this stage the mixture of pigments and wax can also become very toxic! So, please, don't underestimate the fumes of your brews you have built up!

But this is really the one and only disadvantage from all the procedures around encaustic technique. Don't be afraid about this toxic point - if you keep the temperatures low - everything will be ok: no harms, no hazards at all. Keep on painting!!!! Have a good ventilation in your working area - like usual - and you avoid any risks.

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Coming soon:
Advanced Methods & Techniques
about Encaustic

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