Encountering Encaustic:An Ancient Technique for Modern Day Kids
FAEA ConferenceOctober 15-17, 2010
Orlando, Florida
Glenda B. Lubiner, NBCTCoconut Palm Elementary
Carrie BrookeNorth Broward Preparatory School
Encaustic
The medium, technique or process of painting with molten wax (mostly beeswax), resin, and pigments that are fused after application into a continuous layer and fixed to a support with heat, to achieve a lustrous enamel appearance. The solvent for encaustic is also heat.
• Encaustic paint cools in minutes, which means additional layers can be added almost immediately. Once the surface has cooled, the paint has reached a permanent finish. But the painting can also be revised and reworked at any time --whether seconds later or years later.
• It can be laid on in delicately thin glazes or super thick encrusted impastos.
• It can be carved, shaped and molded -- built to high or low relief.
• Its adhesiveness makes it an excellent collage medium that can be impregnated with foils, paper, glitter, string, found objects, etc.
• The surface quality of encaustic paint can be left rough and matte or worked to a semi-gloss or lustrous high-gloss enamel like finish.
Working with wax involves using heat. Various heated tools can be used to manipulate the wax.
“We don’t want you to think, however, that they are all necessary to have (professional tools). We know one artist who works on a wood burning stove in a non-electrified cabin. An old electric skillet, a cheap hot air gun or torch, and a few brushes are all you need to get started. The important thing is to start .”
www.rfpaints.com
Fayum Funeral Portrait, Mummy Portrait of a Woman, Antinoopolis, End of the Reign of Trajan, 98-117 A.D., Wax portrait on wood.
What to paint with:
Encaustic paint is basically beeswax, pigment and a little bit of resin.
For many years pre-made colors were not available and many artists made their own paint.
What tools to paint with:
Since encaustic involves heating wax, there are a few tools that must be used that you don't use in other types of painting.
You will need something to melt your wax. An electric hot palette, electric frying pan or a similar appliance will do.
You can use natural hair brushes and palette knives to apply the paint.
You will need another tool to reheat (fuse) the paint once it is on the surface. This is to ensure that the layers of paint you apply fuse together and will not flake apart later.
What to paint on:
Because of the brittle nature of encaustic paint, it is best used on a rigid support, such as a panel or sturdy sculptural surface.
The second requirement is that the surface be absorbent. The wax must be able to adhere to the surface or the painting may fall apart at a later date. (This is why acrylic gesso should not be used.)
How to use encaustic:
There are several steps to painting in encaustic. This differs from other mediums, where once you brush on the paint it is usually there to stay.
The first step is to apply the molten paint to the surface. This can be done with natural hair brushes, palette knives, or by pouring the paint from cups.
After the paint is on the surface it is re-heated (fused). This is to ensure that the different layers of wax are bonded together and will not flake apart later. It is also what makes the encaustic process exciting. You can change the image very little or very much at this stage. Colors can sink, or they can rise, edges will blur, shapes can change, texture can be removed or created. Fusing of the work is very important. It also opens up many possibilities for the artist.
The properties of encaustic and the way that is is worked give the artist many possibilities. You can get effects that are like many other mediums, yet it is always encaustic. You can have enamel like finishes, incredibly deep layered effects, textural effects, sculptural effects, fantastic college effects and more. For detailed examples and explanations on some of these effects
“The Water Bearers” by Pat Preble
Finishing the work:
Polishing To An Enamel Finish
At any time after the paint has cooled it can be buffed. This can be done with cotton or a slightly more abrasive tissue. The buffing will give the final lustrous touch to the painting.
For several months after the last melting of the paint, the wax/resin will go through a curing process in which the surface continues to harden. During this time moisture or other impurities that have gotten into the paint while molten may work their way to the surface and cause a slight haze. A simple buffing will restore the high polish. Rough textures that have not been fused cannot be easily buffed and may be broken off in the attempt if buffed to vigorously.
Encaustic paintings do not need to be varnished or protected by glass.
The Effect Of Temperature On Encaustic Paintings:
An encaustic paint film is stable in a temperature range of approximately 40-110°F (4-44°C). In very cold temperatures wax will shrink slightly. As a result, layers that have not been well fused together or well fused to the ground may separate. This can cause cracking on the surface, especially if the work is being transported. Mention should be made again that encaustic paint made from beeswax without resin can develop a bloom, or clouding, that can only be removed by reheating the wax.
Very hot days can soften the paint somewhat, but will cause no real damage. If any dulling occurs, the surface can be buffed when the painting is cooler.
www.rfpaints.com
Greek artists were painting with encaustic as long ago as the 5th century BCE. It was used in the painting of portraits, scenes of mythology, for the coloring of marble and terra cotta. Encaustic was also used for coloring or tinting ancient Greek Sculptures.
Peplos Korec.650BCE - Greece
Wax is an excellent preservative of materials. It was partly from this use that the art of encaustic painting developed. The Greeks applied coatings of wax and resin to weatherproof their ships. Pigmenting the wax gave rise to the decorating of warships. Mention is even made by Homer of the painted ships of the Greek warriors who fought at Troy.
The use of a rudimentary encaustic was therefore an ancient practice by the 5th century B.C. It is possible that at about that time the crude paint applied with tar brushes to the ships was refined for the art of painting on panels. Pliny mentions two artists who had in fact started out as ship painters.
• The use of encaustic on panels rivaled the use of tempera in what are the earliest known portable easel paintings. Tempera was a faster, cheaper process. Encaustic was a slow, difficult technique, but the paint could be built up in relief, and the wax gave a rich optical effect to the pigment. These characteristics made the finished work startlingly life-like. Moreover, encaustic had far greater durability than tempera, which was vulnerable to moisture. Pliny refers to encaustic paintings several hundred years old in the possession of Roman aristocrats of his own time.
• The nature of encaustic to both preserve and color led to its wide use on the stone work of both architecture and statuary. The white marble we see today in the monuments of Greek antiquity was once colored, probably delicately tinted like the figures on the Alexander sarcophagus in theArcheological Museum of Istanbul. Pliny says that when the sculptor Praxiteles was asked which of his pieces he favored, he answered those "to which [the painter] Nicias had set his hand." Decorative terra cotta work on interiors was also painted with encaustic, a practice that was a forerunner to mosaic trim.
Encaustic Painting on
canvas on wood of Maria
Regina, Virgin of Clemency
(Rome, Sta. Maria in
Trastere. 8th century exact
copy of a Roman work from
the beg.6th century.
Perhaps the best known of all encaustic works are the Fayum Funeral Portraits painted in the 1st through 3rd centuries CE by Greek painters in Egypt. A portrait of the deceased, painted either in the prime of his life or after death, was placed over the person’s mummy as a memorial. These are the only surviving works from ancient times.
Roman Era Funerary Portrait Paintings
These portraits were, in many cases, finely executed in encaustic paint on wood or, less frequently, on stuccoed linen.
With their direct full gaze and strong presence, these portraits, at once Greco-Roman in their painting style and intrinsically Egyptian in their purpose, bring the inhabitants of ancient Egypt before us with compelling immediacy.
Many of these marvelous works of art were actually taken from Egypt as early as 1615 (by the Italian traveler Pietro della Valle) and later, from Thebes, by Henry Salt. However, it was not until the paintings literally flooded the art market in the 1880s that they caused much interest.
It should be noted that despite the large number of recovered portraits, only one or two percent of the burials were provided with these paintings.
Most of the portraits depict the deceased at a relatively young age, and many show children. However, scans of many mummies reveal a correspondence of age and, in suitable cases, sex between mummy and image.
Most of these portraits have now been detached from their mummies. Yet, they provide a wealth of information about the clothing, adornment and physical characteristics of Egypt's wealthier inhabitants during Roman times.
The unique art form of mummy portraiture flourished in Roman Egypt. Stylistically related to Greco-Roman painting, it was created for a typically Egyptian purpose: inclusion in the funerary trappings of mummies.
The paintings, many on lime wood or on linen shrouds, use both Egyptian and Greco-Roman techniques, and often a combination of the two. And the strongly naturalistic images show complexions ranging from dark with African features to the palest of white, reflecting the melting pot that was the Egypt of that period.
While the clothing, hair and jewelry imitate the fashions of imperial Rome, the mummification and accompanying views of the afterlife are Egyptian, and there are repeated references to Egyptian gods.•www.touregypt.net/featurestories/mportartcle.htm
Contemporary Encaustic
Artists
John Dahlsen
• Plastic Purges on Encaustic Wax
“”I am painting my ground with encaustic wax, but not the plastic purges.”
John Dahlsen 10/14/06
DAVID SCANAVINO
Grey Guillotine (Detail) 2004
Encaustic, Gravel, acrylic on panelrey Guillotine (Detail) , 2004. Encaustic, gravel,
acryl. 72x36 inches.
“I like it (encaustic) because it functions somewhere between a sculptural material and paint depending on how hot it is. Also, it holds brushstrokes in a very beautiful way and can be polished after it has cooled. As for the pieces with gravel, the rocks were glued to the panel before I painted with the encaustic. Although, encaustic paint is capable of holding another material inside of it (kind of like an entombing). I think Jasper Johns is probably the greatest at this with his flag paintings that contain pieces of newspaper.”
David Scanavino10/14/06
Jo Ann DurhamCosmic Patterns
Inks and Encaustic
“I paint in the abstract using
universal symbols and am
now executing a series on
geometric and thematic
abstraction.”
• www.iseartists.org/jdurham/htm/cosmic.htm
Michael Papworth
“Textured Mountains”
Encaustic Wax
4x6” (Mounted)
• www.nantais-gallery.co.uk/gal1/papworth.htm
We hope that this has helped you to learn a little more about
Encaustic Painting,
past and present.
