The Touble With Wax

Painting with encaustic is very different to oil painting. I think I've probably already said that in a previous post somewhere. Whilst it offers great transparency, opacity and luminosity, depending on how much you apply and how much pigment you add to the wax, I'm finding that it offers virtually no control over nuances of marks. With oil paint you can load your brush with as much or as little paint as you like, and,with a little practice, change how each stroke of paint looks - even in mid-stroke. a twist of the brush, changing the pressure or a scrubbing motion will all affect how the paint looks. There is very little of this in encaustic painting by comparison. The wax starts to cools as soon as you lift the brush from the wax pot. It cools (and hardens) instantly on touching the painting surface. You then fuse it with a blow torch or heat gun, which can change how it looks, much it is not the same as working back into wet oil paint. Largely, once you lay down your wax, that is the mark you have until you work on top of it with something (more wax or oil paint). You don't work into it, like you can with wet oil paint. This makes it tricky. That said, it is good fun, and it does force you to work with the marks that you have more than you necessarily do with oils. I enjoy looking at the wax as it's building up and seeing what it suggests to me. It's a bit like painting with Rorschach ink spots.

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