Encaustics Part 1: Tools you will need

My good friend Limnides has expressed an interest in encaustics that I've been raving about, so this has prompted me to get my ass in gear to make my blog posts about encaustics! Yay! I'm going to do separate blogs for each section and make it as thorough as possible.

For this series of blogs, I'm going to not only put in my own experiences, but I'm also going to be pulling in resources from some research I've done, just to make it as well rounded as possible. I'm also going to go in depth into each of the tools you need as well. A lot of the time i get lists of tools, but not why they're used so you can't properly improvise if you cant find them.

Here we go, If you want to Make your own medium and paint with encaustics, here is a list of the tools you will need:

A kitchen scale. Something that will measure in small increments. something like a weight watchers scale or something. Very cheap at wal-mart or something.

Mine was fancy, and suited my style. HAHA! it was $15 at value Village. The top dish comes off and I use it for all sorts of things, and its easy to adjust it :)

anyways, you need to be able to read it, and you need to be able to measure fairly accurately. I don't really need it for more than a pound of wax at a time, but depending in the quantities you want to make of medium, you might need something that goes higher.

A "hot palette" - This is going to be whatever you can come up with. A Griddle with a flat surface with adjustable temperature, or in my case, a Cookie sheet wrapped in tinfoil placed over the 2 front burners on my stove. Griddles tend to work better because of the more uniform heating of the surface.

A thermometer - to monitor the temperature of your wax. don't ever let your wax or resin get over 225°. there is no need. The resin in Medium when you make it can get around 200 to melt, but other than that, keep it as low as possible to keep molten, but Never boil. Beeswax melts at 178°, so it shouldn't be much more than that. Just keep it real people :)

Paint Cups - Little metal cups to melt wax, medium and pigments in for each colour you wish to use. Mini load pans, cupcake pans, and other sorts of metal cups do wonders. I went to the thrift store and picked up all the little camping cups and stuff I could find. These will go on top of your "hot palette". they need to be wide enough to fit in the width of whatever you are painting with. This is not necessary if you are painting by applying wax directly to Irons. This is for the method of painting I use, that requires brushes. If you are applying wax on irons, you need to pre make or buy your blocks of medium with Pigment in them. more on that later.

Tacking Iron - Or any kind of travel iron that has no holes. a steam iron wont do. having said that, I searched high and low for such a tool, and besides the Iron you can buy for encaustics specifically, I have found nothing. I've been to every thift store, looked at travel irons... Everything has freaking steam holes... So, I modified ours. I wrapped it in tin foil. In the future I may make a more permanent modification with some actual metal plate, but for now the tin foil is working. Its a bit heavy. If you do the same thing, try getting a small travel iron.

Do not leave water in the iron if it is a covered steam iron. Noisy strangeness occurs! HAHA! Love the wax dripping off the bottom of mine? HAHA! my sister didn't :) you need to use a low setting.





Brushes - I'm not crazy! Its true, i use paintbrushes. I learned this technique for encaustics from 2 amazing artists, Suzanne kay, and Maria Josenhans. The brushes need to be natural hair. I generally stay away from natural hair because there is a huge amount of cruelty in the animal hair/ paint brush industry, but I made an ethical exception and got these Escoda Hog hair brushes. They're a great investment. and you never have to wash them. the hardened wax does nothing to harm the bristles. You cant use synthetic because they will melt and stink. Get only Top quality brushes! the last thing you want is embedded little hairs in you painting... or is it?



Silicone Muffin tray or wrappers - you can also use things like metal muffin tins, or the like but if you want to make pucks of medium or pigment blocks you need to pour them into some kind of mold that you can pop them out of. Silicone is the best for plain ease.

Other items: a Ladle that is all metal to spoon your medium into the molds, a little knife to clean up the grit off your pucks, and a mortar and pestle to grind resin if you are making medium (you can also use a bag and beat it with a rolling pin), a double boiler is good (or a makeshift one. it buffers the heat on the wax so it wont burn).

You will probably find other tools to create various textures and effects as well. Just remember that once you use something for encaustics, Never use it on food again! you must dedicate your tools to this art. I suggest buying things specifically for it.

Cleaning tools is easy, just wipe them off when they're hot... I tend to let the wax harden on them.

Now you have all the tools, you'll need supplies as well. you know, to paint!

Surfaces:
You need to use a rigid support to paint on. I used ungesso-ed cradled panels from Opus Framing. you can use some primed surfaces but I prefer the raw wood look. You need a porous surface. Acrylic gesso will not do. stick to wood panels, or canvas wrapped panels if you want the texture.

Medium :
If you aren't making encaustic Medium yourself, you will need to have some. Un-pigmented medium can have pigments mixed in, or you can buy the coloured pigment sticks as well.
You can also Tint your medium with Oil sticks, or Powdered Pigments. When using powdered pigments, use a mask. for the love of god, do not breathe that stuff in. Turn off all fans and close breezy windows. you want ventilation, but you need to not have that stuff blowing around. If you are scooping Cadmium red and a breeze blows it in your face, you are potentially in trouble.

Pigment:
I use oil paint, but beware, not all paints can be heated. If your colour contains cyanide, or other known toxic chemicals, do not heat them! I will have a list of pigments (with the pigment code: IE: PW4 listed.) to avoid here:

PW4 : Zinc White/Flake white - Sometimes still contains lead, but it also does messy strange things when heated even if it is synthetic. Avoid.

PB27: Prussian blue - Contains cyanide. Avoid.

PR83: Alizarin Crimson - The "permenant alizarin" and other hue pigments are okay, but the PR83, alizarin genuine pigment is not. Avoid.

PBK7.9 Ivory Black - Uses burning to create the pigment, so it reacts funny to more heat. Avoid.
PBK1.6 Peach black - Same problems as PBK7.9.

"Madder" & "Lake" colours should be avoided because they use the same chemicals/materials as the alizarin, and are often fugative.

Phthalo Colours are OKAY to use. Many believe they are not, but the mistake is in believing they contain cyanide, they do not, they contain Cyanine, which is okay to heat.

Cadmium's - the heating of cadmium's actually isn't the problem, the colours are just unstable. (Cadmium's are actually heated to achieve different colours to make the original pigments). I've not had any major problems yet using them.

Hansa Yellow - In  discussion with www.encausticpaints.com they mentioned that hansa yellow gives off toxic fumes at 300 degrees.

A note on using Oil paints:
Linseed oil in Oil paints makes your wax a bit softer too, so keep that in mind when you are using it. Once you get making your own mediums, you can modify the ratio of resin to wax to compensate for that. also putting your paint on tissue or paper towels before you use it will absorb some of the oil.

If you are Making your medium:

Darmar Resin Crystals (NOT damar Varnish). you want the resin crystals to melt into the wax. this created a higher melting point for your paintings so it doesn't melt if you turn on the oven to make dinner, and it also makes your painting polish able. It also stops the oxidization of the wax which causes the "blooming" you will see on beeswax, that's the white dusty stuff on your candles. you can always buff up your paintings with a soft cloth anyways if you do get bloom.

Beeswax (do not get bleached. either use raw, or filtered. Bleaching not only is toxic when heated, but it will yellow. Filtering removes the pollen that colours the wax, bleaching only discolours it, the colour will come back in time, but you'll be dead before you see it for heating bleach.) I personally like the rich colours of Pure beeswax. I have two sources for my wax. HoneyBee centre in Surrey BC, and Planet Bee in Vernon. both have reasonable prices, and PlanetBee ships. Honeybee Centre has a more golden yellow colour to the wax, where planet Bee has a darker colour.

You might want to try other waxes, to get other properties from them, but I like beeswax for its wonderful rich colour, and the wonderful scent. Encaustic paintings are an all over sensory experience to view and to paint. If you haven't seen, touched, and smelled an encaustic painting in person, you haven't lived. You must see one in person to fully appreciate the depth that layering the wax achieves, the feeling of the wax, and the smell of it.. Its amazing! To reduce cost if beeswax is a bit pricey for you, add up to 50% microcrystalline wax and you will keep those properties in beeswax that we love. Carnauba in small quantities (10% or less) will add some brittleness to to the wax, but paraffin is too brittle, and is a petroleum product. Boo.

Thats about it for supplies for now. If I think of something I miss, I'll come back and edit and add to this. And I'll get that bad pigment list updated ASAP.

Next up: Making Medium!