Branding with Heat and Fire with Lorraine Glessner

It has been a week since I was at the 5th International Encaustic Conference. Last Sunday (June 5th) I attended Lorraine Glessner’s demo on Branding with Heat and Fire. Lorraine’s demo was about burning paper and wood as collage elements or as under painting for encaustic work.

If you are attempting these techniques yourself, make sure that you have a working fire extinguisher close at hand and take proper safety precautions so that you don’t burn yourself.

Lorraine demonstrated burning techniques on paper, but all of these techniques can work equally well with fabric. The paper or fabric can then be incorporated as a collage element within an encaustic painting. Burnt tracing paper when covered with medium disappears in the wax just leaving the burnt effect, lovely. Lorraine used a metal ruler to extinguish the flame if the paper ignited.

Lorraine demonstrated burnt paper effects:

• with wood burning tools on tracing paper
• to create lacy holes and lines in tracing paper with incense sticks
• with smoke from a candle to create soot marks on paper. The black candle smoke leaves carbon on the paper that you can smudge or scratch into to create interesting effects

Pyrography – Branding on wood panels to create a scorched underpainting:

Lorraine scrounges for interesting metal bits that can create beautiful branding effects. She carefully will brand the pattern of the hot metal into the wood (or on paper). Lorraine then used a mini iron to add white encaustic medium into the burned area. It was a beautiful effect.

Take a workshop with Lorraine Glesner

You can view Lorraine Glesner’s artwork & workshop schedule on her website.

Be sure to check out all the posts about the Encaustic Conference and mark your calendar for next year’s conference!