more wax and bad cats

Another waxy collage.  This one started out as a piece of card-stock I used to test some new spray ink and a new stencil.  I like the colors and started rolling on acrylic paint with a brayer, gluing on scraps and little bits of stuff, and topping it all off with beeswax.  Fun, fun, fun.

Meanwhile, I've been trying to make cat art for the butterfly effect this week.  I was so excited by the theme, being rather fond of felines, but let me tell you, this ended up being miserable.  All attempts at cat art were simultaneously really ugly and really "cute".  I don't do cute.  Here's the best thing I came up with.  I almost didn't post it because it's not really what I'm interested in doing.  Somebody recently said she doesn't make art she wouldn't hang on her wall.  This falls into that category for me.

It's hard to tell from the picture, but I cut the cat pieces out of a big sheet of painted paper and assembled him on top of a collage of my other painted papers, and made his whiskers out of embroidery thread and wire, and his claws out of wire.  Part of why I hate this is the colors - the pastelly purply thing isn't me either.  (so why did I paint those papers in those colors in the first place and leave them in my stash to tempt me into making art I hate?)

So I leave you with this journal page I made a few years ago, which actually DOES hang on my studio wall, in spite of the fact that the caption is so poorly stamped you can barely read it.

It's a picture of Jake and it says "Never counts to ten when we play hide and seek"

I thought about re-stamping the caption for this posting, but I would much rather melt some more wax.

waxing euphoric

Here's my second attempt at playing with wax.   This time I melted three pots of beeswax - I left one in it's natural state, but I added a cheap oil pastel to the other pots and melted it along with the wax for color.  Encaustic artists everywhere are cringing, I know, but it was a worthwhile experiment.

I made a very compelling mess, and it was SO MUCH FUN.

 I started by painting with the orange and blue wax directly onto canvas board.  I zapped it with the heat gun just a little bit to blend the edges of the color, then I coated a piece of marbled rice paper with plain beeswax and adhered it.  (That's the weird blue nebula in the lower left corner).  I then added a piece of wasp's nest.

Yes, wasp's nest.

So, hang on - I need to tell you a story.

A few years ago I met this really cool woman named Debbie.  She's an artist and puppeteer and all around fascinating person.  We met because she works with the open land foundation in the town where I work and I was planning some nature programming for my after school program in one of the local nature preserves.  We spent 3 glorious hours in the woods together, sharing our passion and wonder for the beauty of the natural world.

Here's a picture she took of me poking at a pile of coyote scat with a stick.

 ANYWAY - last week, I came to work one morning and there was this beautiful amazing piece of "paper" on my desk.  It was clearly a piece of a wasp's nest

only it has the most amazing colors in it.  Grey and brown and cream and moss green and yellow ochre.  There was a post it note from one of my employees saying "from the puppet lady".

Debbie had stopped by my office because she knew how much I'd like this and want to share it with the kids.  Here are some pictures that do not do justice to it's beauty

( I'm certain my staff thought this was the WEIRDEST thing ever.  This lady shows up unannounced to give a piece of a wasp's nest to their boss and she's positively GIDDY about it.)

Now back to the art.  The colors in this paper were so inspiring, I thought it would be cool to work some of it into the collage.

Sadly, once it was covered with beeswax, it ended up looking like a piece of burned bacon.  

Lessons learned.

(mmm....bacon....)

I added a thick layer of natural color beeswax on top of this whole mess and blew it around into puddles with the heat gun.   I colored with brown oil pastels and turned on the heat gun to melt them into the wax. I jammed some bottle caps into the hot wax to make the circles.  I found a spiral paper clip on my work table and made some impressions with it in the upper left corner and then embedded the actual clip into the lower right corner.  I sprayed the whole think with walnut ink to let the brown stain seep into the cracks in the wax and then wiped all the excess off the surface.  I declared it sufficiently mutilated and called it a day.

Overall it's a big muddy mess, but I'm oddly pleased with it.  

I'm already well into my next wax experiment.  If things go well I'll show it for paint party friday.

The Bee's Knees

I had a feeling I was going to like beeswax.  Since the first time I heard the word "encaustic" I knew this was something I needed to try.  It's been on my list of things to do for a long time, but it's easy to put off.  First of all there's the issue of a heat source.  I didn't have one in the studio.  THEN there's the whole intimidation and supply factor.  You start looking at supply lists and safety precautions and think you'll be both broke and dead if you try this.  And the encaustic artists?  So incredibly talented that you just want to curl up in a ball under your work table and never show your face again.

But TODAY was the day I banished "Encaustic" from my brain and just started messing around with beeswax.

I found this funny little warming tray at the Salvation Army for a few bucks and grated my block of beeswax with an old cheese grater and dumped it in a soup can to see what happened.  It melted beautifully and made the studio smell great.

I had a cardboard collage in my stash that I got in a swap and didn't really like.  It seemed the perfect thing to start with.  It already had some built in texture, it was sturdy, and I could completely mess it up without feeling bad.  I had no plan or clue - I just started covering up the board with all kinds of layers of paint.  I made some concentric circles with paint and various round objects and hastily dried it with my heat gun so I could get down to the messing-about-with-wax part of my day.

of course LATER I read that encaustic won't stick to acrylic.  good thing I didn't read it first or I wouldn't have tried.  my wax and subsequent layers of acrylic-painted papers are sticking just fine, thank you very much.  (and SEE - I just used the "e" word again! stop it!  this is just playing with wax and nothing more!)

so here's my first experiment messing around with beeswax on top of and underneath paint and paper.

The picture doesn't do much to show the cool sheen and texture it the wax leaves.  There's not a LOT of wax on here, mind you, but enough to carve a few circles and leave some cool ripples.

This was SO much fun and I'm already melting more beeswax and trying to color it with cheap-o oil pastels.  I feel an obsession coming on.  I'll let you know how it goes.