Encaustic Painting Rediscovered: Age Old Techniques Updated for the Contemporary Artist
Instructor: Debbi Simon

Come explore encaustic wax painting in this new two-day workshop highlighting this age-old technique– while incorporating today’s tools, materials, and vibrant waxes. Attendees of any visual art background will benefit from this workshop in wax.

No other medium can match the versatility of encaustic wax, both in technique and result. The definition of encaustic is to “burn in.” In today’s terms, that means heating wax through a variety of techniques that can achieve different results. It can be as simple as melting a box of crayons with beeswax to working with pigments, refined beeswax, a variety of hot tools, and mixed media objects.

By starting with the basics, attendees will learn to work with the unique properties of wax to create textures that can be smooth and enamel-like, or extremely dimensional.  We will continue to build on these techniques learning to layer materials (light-weight verses heavy-weight), alter the wax with a variety of hot tools, incise, add found objects like fibers, nature and small treasures, and embellish with additional color such as oil pastels, micas, dyes, stamp pads, spices etc.

Students are encouraged to create a finished grouping highlighting the techniques they learn, or to make the medium their own by utilizing learned techniques, objects, and materials that emphasize their individual creativity. Students will walk way with an in-depth understanding of how wax can be used as a new medium or as a new player in their own media.

Material fee covers:

• Supplies:
• Archival Clay board
• colored wax and wax medium
• rub-on’s
• stencils
• variety of paper including tissue ink prints
• mold material to make your own
• iron wire, fibers, gold leaf, carbon and graphic paper
• found objects and miscellaneous demo, student and studio supplies

• Tools:
• Use of all heating tools
• Heat palette, different size irons, hot brushes, heated incising tools and heat gun
• an assortment of incising tools, stencils, die cut machine and molds for creating wax castings

• 4 sheets of rigid water color paper (any size but keep in mind the size of the tables)
• An assortment of items you would like to work with (items will also be provided). Some examples are listed below but are not limited to…use your imagination and look around your studios, kitchen and outdoors. Objects can be 3 dimensional (just of a smaller scale). 
• Collage images
• Stencils - paper/plastic
• Ink jet prints on tissue and regular paper
• Mica or other textured pigment like spices, embossing powders etc…
• Oil pastels, oil paints or oil sticks
• Nature objects, leaves, flowers, bugs etc…
• 2 and 3 dimensional found objects
• Rubber stamps and ink pads

Please contact Debbie if you have any questions.

ADDITIONAL PROGRAM INFORMATION