I’ve always loved history. It gives you a sense of where you come from and helps to guide you where you want to go. My first career was as an archivist for a municipal government. I loved looking through historical documents and photos. My job included retrieving and providing access to the original documents for research, delivering school programs, accessioning and organizing new acquisitions to the permanent collection, curating exhibits, along with digitizing parts of the collection. In my career as an artist, this love of history shines through. I incorporate historical photos, books, magazines, maps, and ...
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Rusting Paper for Collage Adding collage to your encaustic work can lead to really interesting results. Some of the best collage papers are the ones you make yourself. Making rust paper is a bit smelly, but absolutely worth it! Steps-by-Step instructions for Rust dying 1. Gather your supplies A Large plastic tray or similarVinegar in a spray bottle (can dilute with water if needed)Items that will rust, ie. any iron or iron alloy - steel is an iron alloy, but stainless steel will not rust (think: metal objects craftspeople can forge, junkyards, old train yards, washers, nails, ...
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Encaustic Gesso is typically used to prime your substrate so that you are beginning with a white ground. But, encaustic gesso doesn't have to be white. In this post, you'll discover two ways to tint encaustic gesso. Underpainting with Encaustic Gesso In 2011, Hylla Evans introduced us to Using Coloured Gesso for Encaustic Underpainting. Underpainting allows you to map out your painting composition before you add wax layers. Make your own encaustic gesso In her post, Testing Suitable Encaustic Grounds using the Freezer Test, Amie Brand provides her recipe for making your own encaustic gesso. 2 part ...
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The information in this post comes from Nicholas Wilton's Creative Visionary Program and is published with permission. Vive la différence! Nicholas Wilton, the founder of Art2Life and the Creative Visionary Program (CVP), talks a lot about the power of differences to make your art stronger. "One of the overarching ideas in this course is differences. How can what we include in our art, not to mention our life, make us feel more alive? Understanding the juxtapositions of opposites in our art will allow us to better exploit and communicate our own particular point of view more powerfully ...
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Do you find that you are in the habit of using the same colours all the time? In this post, Nicholas Wilton presents a fresh approach to colour mixing. A couple of years ago I discovered Nicholas Wilton's Art2Life Free Workshop on Facebook. This class helped me understand colour so much more clearly than I ever had before. Understanding Colour to make your art stronger The 5 most important aspects of Colourfrom Nicholas Wilton Value = the lightness and darkness of a colour. The viewer will see the highest value contrast areas in your art first. Value ...
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Beading Up?? Frequently encaustic printmakers ask how to resolve the issue of beading on the HOTbox plate. What is the #1 reason HOTbox plates bead up? The answer is wax. Certain transparent colors of wax are of a chemical nature that causes the wax to separate on the plate, i.e. Green Gold or Indian Yellow, synthetic pigments, etc. Wax used for cleaning that is not fully removed from the plate and possibly begins to permeate the plate or at least build up on the plate over time.Adding wax or medium to your plate while printing will increase ...
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I’m passionate about stencil making! Heat resistant stencils allow me to use my hand-drawn doodles over and over again. One stencil can create hundreds of prints that never look identical. The wonderful by-product of this process is that a used stencil, covered in ink and wax can be a thing of beauty that begs to be used in your artwork. In this post, I will provide a step-by-step process for making your own heat resistant stencils from a hand-drawn doodle. I provide instructions for cutting a stencil by hand and for using a Cricut Maker. Stencil Making ...
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