Friday:: Sink or Swim

No Parking
encaustic, paper and photo transfer on Birch Panel 9x12

Have you ever been faced with that old addage - Sink or Swim?  or.. Fish or Cut Bait... however, you want to say it - it holds the same decision.   Its a choice to either take part and be a "doer" or just be on the sidelines be a "watcher". 
Photo transfer work in encaustic has been elusive for me.  Its not that its a hard process, in fact its quite easy.  I've decided to take a run at it for the next month.  I have been thinking for a long time on how to combine the two things that I love - photography and encaustic.  There are lots of examples of work out there of people who do just that.  You can check out this website or this one or here.
One of my favorites is Ben Hecht and his amazing waves. 

So, I'm on board.. I'm going to give it a go and try to work on combining photography and encaustic painting.  This is one of my first attempts.  I used this procedure to transfer the image to the wax.  Her swimsuit is a photo I had taken of a reflection in some building windows.  The door to the left and no parking sign... mine too.  I enhanced the door with some strips of book pages - why... well, the photo didn't transfer well and that's what came to mind.  Don't you just love when something appears to be going badly - then ahhhhh... Genius strikes and it all turns out OK.
I'm hooking up with Paint Party Friday today. 

Sunset in Wax

I spent a few hours dabbling in the studio last night. This is what came of it.

I scraped in the round design with a grooved pottery tool. The groves are filled with red, orange, black and white wax kinda randomly. I scraped back to reveal the multi colored bands in the circle. The black flowers are silhoutte images from a photo I took during the summer. They are laser printed and transfered onto the wax.

Still working small... this one is only 3x3.

I was happy with it.

Balancing Act

The Balancing Act

I had thought this one would come out a little differently. There were things I really loved here and things that didn't work. It started out as a vibrant blue and white background with a texture photo transfer. It looked pretty good. Then I added yellow which I really didn't like that well. So, I scraped back to expose some of the underneath. But still it left too much yellow I think in the end.

The photo is a laser print. First put in PSE and made into a smudge stick drawing. The first transfer was just OK. I was a little impatient and rubbed off some of the ink transfer. I put a layer of medium over the first pass and then added a second photo transfer of the same image. Again - oops, scraped through a little too hard and took off some of the ink layer. One more time, this time in color and lightened up quite a bit. I really like the result and the way the underlayers add depth and show through. However, I was disappointed in how dark the image got with no way back.

The balls are incised around round lids then scraped out all the way to the panel underneath. I then filled them with the colored wax.

Overall, I'm happy with parts, but unhappy with parts. I need to focus on the things I like about it and think about ways to improve for next time the things I don't like. I think I will work on it a little more and see what comes of it. Or maybe start over.. I'm not sure yet. I did learn a lot from this one which is what counts at this point in the game

Lessons Learned

1. When doing the photo transfer to keep in mind the layering of several images looks cool but gets dark. Need to think through that with image choice, maybe only two layers...
2. A light touch and patience is what matters for the removing of the paper from the image. Good burninshing too.
3. Yellow is bright and makes a huge statement. Need to be warry using so much of it.
4. The round dug out shapes are cool.
5. Really think through and lay out the background before getting into the image transfer. There really is no going back and repairing it or doing it over without somehow going over the photo image too.
6. More wax. Layer it up. It looks better and is easier to work with.
7. Really work on acheiving a smooth surface. I actually think this is harder than I think. It will need some practice.