Making Encaustic Medium

Today I finally took the plunge and worked on some handmade encaustic medium for my next series of paintings.  I'd run out of commercial medium and had decided earlier this summer that I would just make my own, as it was more economical.  So, today I followed a traditional recipe of 8 parts beeswax to 2 parts damar resin crystals.  I ended up making two batches this afternoon, so now I have 24 muffin-sized cakes of medium and 2 small "loaves".

Here I am stirring the sticky melting resin crystals into the melted beeswax.  Notice the dirt and bark that will be strained out of the mixture through cheesecloth after the wax and resin are completely combined.

This is a shot of the hot liquid medium right after I poured it into an old muffin tin and a foil loaf pan.  (Neither will ever be used for food again!)  I had a feeling the medium would be difficult to remove from the foil - and it was - so with the next batch I poured the extra into a metal loaf pan.  Much better results that time.  It took about 2 hours for the wax medium to cool and harden in the kitchen even with the A/C on.  When the bottom of the pans were cool to touch I tapped them lightly with whatever tool I had handy and the wax popped out smoothly.

Here's a shot of Batch One of my handmade encaustic medium - Tah-dah!  I was really quite pleased with myself and set about making Batch Two right after lunch.  (I am easily amused!)

A special thanks to Jaime Lyerly for posting her foray into handmade medium and to Susan Crouse-Kemp for her video "Making Encaustic Medium".  

encaustic 5

This one was an exploration embedding black, soft, lacey paper in beeswax for the first layer, followed by floral ribbon. The ribbon reacted to the heat by shriveling into a bird-like form. I then added assorted beads to the melted wax, incised circles and arcs, and added alchol inks and copper oil sticks for color. The substrate is a 5" cradled board.

Beeswax collage

These are my first two forays into encaustic art. I love the smell of melted beeswax - it seems to bring me back to my childhood when i spent time watching my dad process honey from the several hives we had in the yard.

This 8" x 8" collage was created on cradled gessoboard, decorative napkins, wrapping paper, and stickers. I used Shiva oil paint sticks to add additional color.

The button collage is created on 5" square cradled gessoboard. The background is tinted with alcohol inks rubbed into the cooled wax. The vintage buttons are from my collection.