Tag Archives: Encaustic Workshop

Encaustic Wax & Fiber Workshop: Dipping, Embedding & Layering

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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

Monthly & Locally

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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

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Encaustic Wabi Sabi-Linda Lenart McNulty (640x385)

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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

Encaustic Wabi Sabi

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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

Local Encaustic Workshop… an encaustic escape!

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We’re having a relaxing and rejuvinating time over at FAVA, the local arts center in beautiful Oberlin, Ohio! Six local artists have come to play in wax and unwind their minds on six consecutive Saturday afternoons; and while the town rushes around below our second story window, we hide ourselves away, layering warm encaustic wax, fusing with torches; and playing with color, design and texture in our encaustic paintings.

Each artist has forged a path of exporation all their own, with direction and guidance…and lots and lots of mixed media and tools.

Each afternoon I demonstrate a few techniques, which are absorbed and reinvented by some, and left for another time by others, as they continue on a path laid out for them from the week before.

Jacob and Julie are furiously productive on their shared griddle, their limbs a blur, painting, fusing and burning in with fire; texturing and building up layers of waxy color.

Jacob is working in reliquaries, bringing in bits of his hair and his childhood teeth to bury, or objects to cast or build upon. One very notable thing about Jacob: each week he chooses an art book from FAVA’s extensive library and uses the artistic styles and palettes as inspiration. His work is an ever evolving experiment, and we love seeing what he has come up with by the end of each session!

Julie has been layering images of her ancestors in pale, muted colors, using phototransfer, mark-making, and collage techniques. She seems to be always one step ahead of the lessons and isn’t afraid to forge her own path, jumping in with both feet! (She is Jacob’s mother so you see where he gets it!)

James and Elizabeth share another warm griddle. Their table is ponderous and meditative, sitting next to the blur that is the J & J table.

James is an Origami Guru and pioneer, and everything he touches morphs into geometric shapes and infinite cycles of pattern upon pattern. You’ve heard of King Midas? Yes, well James intricate encaustic paintings have become gold in his hands. He builds up layers and masks in line and form.

Elizabeth, a local sculptor, is all about texture and process, and has slowly and steadily been uncovering what this encaustic painting is all about. Once she discovered layering in and building up tea, she was a gonner and found her encaustic voice.

Cara and Lynn share the last griddle, and their table is even more ponderous and zen-like.

Cara, an oil painter and master of the drawing, plays with curving and collaged organic forms, and has really taken to slowly incising thin lines in layered wax, which excavates surprise patterns and color.

Lynn, a colorist with a painterly style, is deliberate in her exercises, trying out new techniques, and applying her new-found knowledge into her paintings, which have beautiful, subtle color musings, and tiny detail.

We all look forward to these Saturday Play Dates, coming together with a sigh of relief after hectic weeks, unwinding and encouraging each other while we work, unpeeling the stress and reveling in our laughter, joy and playful experiments. It seems I should call this workshop, The Encaustic Escape!

– Linda