I've just come home from spending 5 days at the Metchosin International Summer School of the Arts where I took an encaustic wax course with instructor Carol Rae. What an experience! Thirteen artists in a room with propane torches, hot molten wax and a pyromaniac's drive to light laquer doused paintings on fire.
Naturally I am a neat freak, but I had to give it all up for this course, which was fast paced and messy.
Here are a few of my first attempts at painting with hot wax.
This is my first one.
This one is painted on a NASA pocelain tile.
This one's my favorite.
Not stepping out of my comfort zone at all, but I still quite like it. It really glows in person and has lovely depth.
On the last day my kids came and lit stuff on fire too. They had a blast. I was too busy supervising to take pics. Here are a couple of pieces I did that morning to surprise them and welcome them to class.
And of course there were alot of pieces that I really didn't like at all.
This is upside down but it hardly matters, it sucks both ways!
And now I'm hooked. The kids and I have created our own encaustic workshop in our home. Here is a japanese style wave I'm working on at home, but it has a long way to go before I'll be happy with it.
So there you have it. A peek inside my first ever art school class.
