Drawing into Encaustic Wax: Line and Stroke

January’s Drawing into Encaustic Wax workshop was a stimulating retreat for a talented group of artists. We played with all types of drawing materials into and onto the wax, learning what is compatible with the wax and what isn’t; how to properly layer and fuse imagery, and how to expand as artists as we integrated old & beloved drawing materials with our new found passion for wax!

Each artist found success within their paintings, using charcoal, pastel, colored pencils, oil pastel, water soluble pastel pencil, and ink.

We discussed the nature of line, how to make line more energetic, and what constitutes dynamic line. We played with color, contrasting the interchange of layering images with the building up of colorful strokes of encaustic paint.

Oil pastel was blended and fused on the surface of some paintings, water soluble crayon wedged between layers, charcoal and pastel drawings were burnished onto the surface and fused, and ink worked in as detail. We used burnishing, direct and indirect transfer techniques, and sometimes drew directly onto the wax.

We made so many new discoveries with such a variety of wax-compatible mediums that I decided we needed to continue our exploration for at least one more workshop, (and really, this is a lifetime pursuit), of delving deeper into the relationship between drawing materials and encaustic wax.

I am looking forward to February’s workshop, this month, called Encaustic Line and Stroke, where we will continue our pursuit of energetic line, along with the layering and building up of  imagery with wax-compatible materials.

I hope to see you there…and thanks for stopping in!

-Linda