Parting with Art...

So I just sent off two of my little paintings and an acrylic felt flower to new homes today. I decided that the flower needed a special little send off, so I made this gift box for my customer to find it in.

Hopefully, it will be a bit of cheer in this week of dreary weather. (And a bit of an added surprise for her, unless she reads my blog of course!)

The paintings were a long awaited commission for a lovely customer who already owned one of my "Angry Flower" encaustic paintings. These two will turn her previously lonely singlet into a fulfilled trio.

It has been a while since I have done any encaustics and it felt good to get back in the studio and get some paint on my hands and wax on the palette.

No one will notice...

"Orange, I wouldn't have noticed if you didn't point it out"

Big Orange has something on his face. Little orange has some slight words of encouragement...even if they are somewhat backhanded. Little orange isn't used to this whole being nice thing. This is a 3 inch x 4 inch minature encaustic painting with acrylic underpainting. Just another in my series of "Mean Flower Paintings" that I offer on Etsy.

Green Flowers

I'm sure she will be Ok, Green.

This little flower isn't so mean, he is a little more concerned than angry and that makes a change for these tiny guys. They tend to be a bit more bitchy than this. It is pretty unusual for them to be this nice to each other.

This little encaustic is 3 inches x 4 inches. I had primed and painted the background for this and another piece this size over two months ago, but just got around to doing the encaustic layers. It was cool enough yesterday for me to fire up the hot plate and melt the encaustics. I consider this a little warm up for a commission that I want to finish this week. I firmly believe that you have to warm up your artistic muscles just as much as you need to stretch your athletic ones.

I hope someone buys this soon...cause I have the perfect Moo stickers to put on the package!

Art that Stinks...

Some of my art really stinks.

Ok, well, it smells because it is encaustic. Encaustics, for those of you who may not have seen or worked with them before, are essentially a mixture of beeswax and oil paint, which are sometimes mixed with a resin. This mixture is then melted and applied to a surface. I mix my own encaustics and love painting with them. However, while I am working with them they do tend to get odoriferous. I am sure there are things in the paint that I should not be inhaling, so I open the windows in my studio space nice and wide. My hubby (who wants me to stop calling him that, by the way) always complains and leaves the house when I am working with them.

I used to mix my encaustics and then melt them directly on the canvas or surface using a heat tool. I sometimes still do this, but recently I found a groovy buffet warmer from the 70's. It is all ripply glass and danish modern handles and I LOVE IT. It doesn't get terribly hot, and I can put my pans of encaustic on it to melt without them getting to too high a temperature. Because the surface is glass, any drips I might make clean right off when the warmer cools down. I still use the hot tool for detail work, but I am getting burned a lot less now.

Note: The little pile of Buddha heads in the corner is a trick that I use to get my wax to melt faster for the pans. I pre-melt a pan of beeswax, and then pour it into a silicone mold of a Buddha that I made a few years ago. That way I have small bits of wax that melt fast without having to saw them off the block with a knife.

Encaustics are stinky when you are working with them, but smell like delicious beeswax/honey when they are done. I am all about integrating all 5 senses into my art, and this is just such an added bonus.

And oh yeah, that little guy you see on my encaustic bench is for newly for sale on Etsy...or will be shortly.