Category Archives: Blog

Encaustic Wax & Fiber Workshop: Dipping, Embedding & Layering

by

0

 

 

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

 

We had great fun in November dipping all types of objects into encaustic wax. I gave each table their own pot of wax, and their own griddle and away we went- experimenting!

We tried two different pours – one, into the back of a cradle board, filling the recess there with wax, which made a nice, deep pool to embed into. The next, as a raised bed of wax on the front of the board- masked off, Daniella Woolf style.

If you look closely at the students’ work, you’ll see that wasps and stink bugs actually make up the flower (each to their own!), blue silk, torn ribbon-style, drapes across petals, lima beans were crushed and embedded, an entire book was dropped into the pot, along with a wasps nest, and dozens of roses… and one student stripped her parakeet naked just to get those bright feathers! Ok, really it molted, but what color!

We made a mess and had a blast!

Well, thanks for stopping in! Check the workshop page for info on upcoming workshops!

–Linda

Cavo-Relieveo Workshop: an exploration into coolness

by

0

Linda Lenart McNulty cavo-relieveo 8 (800x600)

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Wow. Cavo was cool. I had done this technique on my own in the past, but presenting it in a workshop setting really launched some cool ideas.

I presented ideas on using photo-transfer, collage, and intarsia on the bottom layers of the cavo painting, laying the leaves and stencils on top, and finishing with opaque layers of pigmented wax. The effects were stunning!

Everyone had their own discoveries-

Marianne, a fiber artist, went for crisp edges and vibrant color;

Lynn experimented in color with her usual genius, reversing the cave effect in one painting for a raised relief, and playing with metal leaf;

Elizabeth, a metal worker, burnished her leaf on so strongly… that we had a laugh, it was as if she was working in metal, as the wax took the shape of an actual leaf!

Mershona, an art therapist, oooed and ahhhhed over the wax, coaxing leaves out of the wax like buried treasure for a mind bogglingly layered effect!

And at the end, during clean up, a local wasp gave up the ghost and dived into the vat of wax headlong, giving itself to the wax, so that Elizabeth could fish it out and display it on her finished piece. What a wild ending to a very cool workshop!

Maybe we’ll see you at the next one!

Thanks for dropping in!

-Linda

Reflecting on Reflections & Looking toward Cavo-Rilievo

by

0

Linda McNulty Reflections (800x416)

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

After a long summer, it was wonderful reuniting with old friends in the Encaustic Reflections Workshop this September at FAVA! My favorite team of I’ll-try-anything experimenters showed up- yes, that would be…Julie and Jacob! The mother and son duet that keep us entertained. Also, the talented fiber artist, Marianne, came on Saturday to bust a few moves, while meditative Lynn fell into Picasso mode on Sunday. And I heartily enjoyed the sunny, open-to-anything disposition of my totally-new-to-encaustics-what-is-going-on-here student, Theresa, and new-to-encaustics, capable FAVA glass instructor, Sherri.

Even FAVA’s media-artist-extraordinaire, Regina, gave encaustic painting a whirl on Saturday. She was there to document our encaustic process for FAVA, but you could see the wax begin to do its work on her; intoxicating her and drawing her in, until she could stand it no longer and dove in with a brush!

I demonstrated many types of Reflective mixed media, and I was happy to see everyone incorporate areas of Metal Leafing and Metallic Transfer Scribbles and Script into their work.

Here are some images from the workshop for you to peruse. This will give you a feel of the process of the workshop, although all the photos I have are from Sunday (my apologies Marianne!).

I’d like everyone who wants to come to next month’s Encaustic Cavo-Rilievo workshop, to spend time beforehand, opening your eyes to shapes, patterns and textures all around you. Jot down what inspires you into a notebook (the fall grasses on the side of the road- the weave of a tablecloth-the shape of a pear), and take a few photos on your phone. This will give you something to launch from when we’re in class and you have every material at your disposal, but your mind is blank. That’s when an artist looks at their notebook and into the phone images gathered- and voila! You’re ready to go!

And at the last minute, let’s gather some fall leaves and grasses, for we will be making impressions from what we gather. We want to keep the ridges in the leaves, and not press them flat for this workshop, so we don’t need to gather them ahead of time. And there will be plenty to share, as always. Remember, all you really need is a ready mind and a set of hands, so come with notes, or come as you are; just come!

October will be fun! See you there!

  • Linda

Monthly & Locally

by

0

 

Spring, where are your springs! When will you spring upon us! Have we begun to rise from our winter slumber?

Winter Slumber? Are you kidding? If your winter was like mine, you were running nonstop- jumping on and off planes and generally making a disaster area in your studio! Well, I’ve decided to dig myself out of the pile of suitcases and have set my mind to teaching only locally for a while.

With this in mind, I have written up my schedule of  workshops for the year. These are two-day workshops, once a month- the last weekend of each month. I will be presenting fundamental encaustic painting techniques in a series of fun, creativity-boosting weekends.  I do hope this will encourage some of you out-of-towners to travel out to my cute artists town, where things are always hoppin’ and stay for one of the weekends of encaustic painting! Workshop sizes are always small, so you’ll get tons of individual attention.

Also currently, I am sorting and packing everything in my house, as we are putting our beautiful country home up for sale, and moving off to town (two whole miles away!). We’re trading our fishing pond full of bullfrogs for sidewalks, and our fields of waving grasses for cafes, I suppose.

And then, when the dust of this furiously busy season has settled, I’m hoping to find myself sipping lemonade, and again listening to birds and bees, lounging merrily with artist friends, and walking to concerts and performances. This is my mind’s reward for all of this tearing up and stripping away of my house and my schedule. I want to get to the core of the good stuff. For me, part of that will be teaching Encaustics- monthly & locally.  I am really excited. Anybody want to buy a cute country house 2 miles from an artsy college town? It comes with a Studio!

Thanks for stopping in!

-Linda

 

 

Encaustic Wabi Sabi Workshop – Warm and Wonderful

by

1

Encaustic Wabi Sabi-Linda Lenart McNulty (640x385)

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Last Saturday the art room at Oberlin’s historic FAVA building was transformed into an encaustic paradise, when ten artists from the Cleveland area took my Encaustic Wabi Sabi workshop!

The students felt like kids at a candy store, only the candy was stained tea bags, onion skin and mulberry bark paper, dead flower heads, petals and leaves, small twigs and porcupine quills!

There was an overflow of oil paints, encaustic medium, smiles and laughter as the students shared colors, visions and surprises on their waxy griddles.

Every student found their own approach and their own voice in their color and textural choices they made, and no two artists’ work looked alike!

After demos and a good three hours of play, the students packed up their goods and we all enjoyed looking at and sharing in each others’ work. I was truly amazed what the students invented and developed in their short time together and I am looking forward to running this workshop again.

Actually, in the approaching 4 week long series of encaustic classes I am facilitating at FAVA, beginning next Saturday, first thing on the agenda is to show the students how to turn their beautiful Wabi Sabi Collages into Paintings. There are still a few seats open if anyone is interested in signing up. In the class series, all of your questions will be answered on encaustic art and process, and there is plenty of time to stretch out and find your voice, so to speak. It’s a good place to start your encaustic journey. Maybe I’ll see you there!

Thanks for stopping by!

–Linda

Making Your Own Encaustic Medium

by

2

When I am teaching a workshop, I am always asked about the process of making your own Encaustic Medium. I have decided to lay it all out for you here, so you can decide for yourself whether to invest in the process, or leave it to the professionals!

It’s really just a matter of deciding if you’ll be using great quantities, in which making your own would then be a good idea, and if you have the time and the interest. I personally love making Encaustic Medium. It warms me up to the play at hand; I find it relaxing…and you can’t beat the smell! Besides, I (and my students) would quickly go broke if I didn’t make it myself for my workshops. It really keeps the cost of an encaustic workshop down!

Here’s what you’ll need to do it right:

  • Unbleached pharmaceutical grade beeswax (buy at least 5 lbs.)
  • Damar Resin (1 lb.)
  • 2, yes 2 (I use 3, even better!) Electric Skillets with lid and temperature gauge
  • 1 measuring cup you can ruin (one or two cup quantity)
  • 1 Wooden Spoon you can ruin
  • 1 Sieve you can ruin
  • Microfiber Cloth (look in the automotive section of the drugstore) 
  • Paper Towels
  • Nitrile disposable gloves 
  • Optional: Silicone Mat or Silicone Bowl
  • Ventilation (I have a vented kitchen fan above my encaustic station. You might use a window with a box fan blowing out. By the way, that’s a bad plan for those of us who have actual winters!)

Here we go! Click on the first picture to get the full tutorial:

Put skillet on “warm” and add as much beeswax as you like for the ratio you are looking for. I use a 5:1 beeswax:resin ratio for Encaustic Jewelry; I use 7:1 for Encaustic Casting; I use an 8:1 for Encaustic Painting; and I use a 9:1 for my beginner Encaustic Painting Students, which is who this batch is for.
Add the Damar Resin Crystals.
Cover you skillet and raise the temperature to 150* then after the beeswax melts, to 160*. This is my station. The medium I am cooking is in the center.
Come back in an hour or so and check out the happenings. Looks like STIFF Taffy. It’s stuck to the bottom. Raise the temperature to 170* and leave it for a couple hours.
Ah…much smoother….
But not smooth or soft enough….Here’s where I spike the temperature to 200*.
Stir it for a good while. There’s no way to get it to mix without stirring the dickens out of it.
Cover the sieve while it warms. Turn the temperature up to a nice 150*.
Hey! It all fit- what do you know? That’s the benefit of heating up your sieve.
Wipe out the bottom of skillet number one so he’s ready to go again.
Cover the sieve full of medium. It takes a little time to drain through into the warm skillet. Actually, it normally only drains halfway because of the sheer height of the medium. Therefore pop your thermostat back into skillet number one…..
And transfer the sieve over to skillet number one when it’s drained halfway. This photo is of me pulling the sieve out of the first skillet after the last has drained.
Eventually I place the empty sieve into the third skillet to reuse, and I pour the two half batches of medium together. But you could just lay your sieve down on Foil, Silicone or immediately get the microfiber out of the sieve while it’s warm and into the trash. Here is the cooled, clean batch of Encaustic Medium for my beginning FAVA students. I like to label everything!

I usually make two batches at a time in my three skillets, and it’s a bit like a juggling match. If I’m really cranking, I do my last pour into a Silicon Bowl, then I wrap, label and stack my beautiful slabs. I was a little low on supplies when I made this tutorial so I didn’t give you the grand circus of wax juggling and pouring. At any rate, I hope you enjoyed yourself and maybe learned something!

Until next time! –Linda 

Encaustic Kits, Encaustic Tools & Free Step-Outs, Oh My!!

by

0

Hi Everybody!

I so enjoyed all of my students that came to To Bead True Blue this year. I enjoyed connecting and seeing your faces shine as you dove deeply into the Encaustic Experience!

I have created a Luminous Encaustics Artists Group page on Facebook that I will be watching- I hope you will check in and post some work!

For those of you who purchased Luminous Encaustics Wax Blox, I thank you for your support! I did come across some lovely tools recently that I have posted at my Etsy shop, so if you are in need of good Encaustic Tools, you can look there.

Another place I have tools and encaustic mixed media is in my Kits.

I am now in the process of posting each Luminous Encaustics Jewelry Kit’s Step-Out Instructions onto it’s own page on this site.

Today I got the Luminous Encaustic’s Word Shield Step-Out posted. Just hover over the Tab “Jewelry Kits and Wax Blox” on this site, and you’ll see the selection of Kit Step-Outs for you to choose from.

Each Kit and each Step-Out offers instructions on a different encaustic technique, and it’s free!

I make each kit by hand and mail them with love, and I am always available for questions and comments.

Thanks to all of my Encaustic Addicts! Have a great week!

–Linda

To Bead True Blue 2014

by

2

Tucson (640x404)

To Bead True Blue is one of my favorite art retreats. Tucson is a perfect balmy and sunny 70*; women arriving have a skip in their step as they wheel through the halls with their little supply suitcases, with high expectations. Those who come, take workshops to unwind and release their spirits and voices. You can feel the hallways and classrooms humming as each individual sets off to make their artistic dream come true. The teachers are kind and funny, friendships and bonds are instantly forged by all, and the classrooms overflow with the energy of connecting and creating.

And this year my Encaustic students are in for a real treat.

I am teaching four Encaustic workshops, each of them highlighting a different aspect of Encaustic technique, and they’re all going to be energizing and fun! The coolest thing is that this year we’ll do a full Encaustic painting in two of my classes (Word Shield and Cryptic Encaustic) and then translate the painting into a piece of jewelry.

And my classes are all 6 hours this year, so we’ll have more time to play, expand our skills, discuss ideas and share without the rush.

Wearable Encaustic Shrines is on February 2nd. In this workshop we will use tins and bezels to create a variety of small shrines using Encaustic casting, pouring, collage, and faux-finishing techniques with colorful Encaustic wax inside the bezels and tins. And I’ll show you some fun ways to make raised and recessed areas in the wax that are very shrine-like. 

Word Shield is on February 3rd. In this workshop we will play with layering and scraping Encaustic wax colors to get an antique look, I’ll show you how to photo transfer an image onto the painting (for those who want a portrait under their script), and then we will write in metallic script on the surface of the wax- we will do this process first as an Encaustic painting, then as a piece of Encaustic jewelry .

Cryptic Encaustics is on February 4th. In this workshop we will play with layering beautiful transparent colored Encaustic wax, then use deep stamping and excavating on the surface- first as an Encaustic painting, then as a piece of Encaustic jewelry.

Waxing Images is on February 5th. In this workshop we will make multiple Encaustic pendants, playing with colorful imagery, using wax inlay (intarsia), and wax photo transfer. These pendants are a lot of fun, as the size is very unintimidating and the technique very childlike and friendly.

I am really looking forward to meeting my students and having some Encaustic fun so I hope you’ll sign up (go to my workshop page) and we’ll see you there!!!!

-Linda

Encaustic Wabi Sabi

by

5

I have begun playing around with Encaustic Wabi Sabi and I love it! The process is very loose and energetic. I have been drying out Tazo tea bags and have discovered that tea bag paper is exquisite to use with Encaustic Wax. Also, you can see I have been using the tea labels! Since I am a colorist, I have decided my new body of work will focus on the powerful use of one color (of course this one color will have many complex undertones, underpainted layers, etc.) and the forms I paint will be simple, scratchy, overworked areas of dense color and layered tea paper. I hope you like it – I really do, and I have begun to save all my tea bags, religiously drying and emptying them for my future students to play with.

I am teaching an Encaustic Wabi Sabi one day workshop at our local arts center, FAVA, right here in Oberlin, Ohio, on Saturday, March 1st, 2014. Right on the heels of that workshop will be four Encaustic Workshops (Saturdays) where I will guide my students through anything our collective hearts’ desire! Take one or all! Really, shoot out to Oberlin, Ohio if you like! I’ll be here conjuring up a world of discovery in wax!!!!!

Thanks for checking in!

–Linda