I just returned from three days out at Valley Ridge Art Studio, learning from Mary Beth Shaw and Julie Snidle, as well as my inspiring classmates. It is always such a treat to get away to Valley Ridge, of course, it doesn't hurt that a 3-day weekend is such a rarity to start with. The drive out past Dodgeville helps me transition to an all-art, all-the-time weekend and the poor phone reception means I couldn't even be connected to the "real world" if I tried.
The workshop, Wax On/Wax Off, focused on various techniques using melted wax. On the morning of the first day, we learned about batik paper. This is something I've been wanting to try for ages. The results I've seen are always so amazing. The color is super intense and they make even simple pieces like shipping tags turn into wonderful pieces of art.
Well, on their way to being art. I honestly could have spent at least two of the days doing just batik paper. Though the technique is simple, there is lots of room for elaborate designs. I had spent weeks thinking about various shapes and designs and patterns and I barely scratched the surface in terms of exploration. Clearly I will have to do more. Such papers can, of course, just be cut up and used in book pages and covers, or as parts of journals, but I'm also interested in trying some that are more stand-alone.
Basically, you apply melted wax down onto the paper surface - everywhere you wax, the original paper will show through - this in itself can be interesting if you use patterned papers. You can use a little tool that dispenses a line of wax like a pen, or you can use metal objects dipped in wax - things like copper pipe, spatulas, potato mashers. Gives a whole new level to a trip to the thrift store. Then you paint on some dyes. The dyes are basic procion dyes which are used for fabric dyeing - the color is really lovely and intense. I hardly even explored all the different colors there were to explore. Then, if you like, more layers of wax, more painting. By the end of the morning, I was just starting to explore more complex designs. Since you are painting with dye, you can't get a really precise line, but even working with swathes of color (and bleeding between colors) allows for some interesting results.
I particularly like the look of batiks using map paper as the base - the underlying lines show through faintly with the suggestion of landforms... Yeah, I could have spent a day just dyeing pieces of maps. At the end of your dyeing and wax applying, you make sure it is all dry, and then you iron off all the wax. And even though you think you know what you are doing as you go along, that moment of revealing the finished product always has a little surprise. I had in mind some sort of design that suggested birch trees... I feel like there is some more work to be done to refine the design but I was happy with the way it turned out:
The remainder of the workshop was spent learning about encaustic. This is a process that I have wanted to learn about for a long time. I do make collages with melted wax and I love the effect of wax, so I was curious to learn more about this process which also uses wax but which was clearly more involved than my simple approach.
My head hurts. That's what a friend and I say when we have so many ideas and inspiration whirling around up there. And boy do I ever have that going on right now!
It was so great to really immerse myself in all the different techniques and to learn more about the process. I ended up working on a total of five collages. I think for me, I'm interested in encaustic because of the depth that you can add. My collages tend to be really dense, but two-dimensional, and I was curious to see if using encaustic would allow me to seperate some layers from each other. The collage, above, is....well, I guess it is done. It is not nearly as full as I would like it to be, but I also don't see what/where I would add.
I have two other collages which are not quite done. I'm not quite sure what else I'm going to do with them, but I'm not quite satisfied. The first piece used a bit of a picture that I copied from a friend's Facebook page. She is in Prague and I LOVE the clock that they have there. I used that, along with other circular elements. I don't know if it needs one more color for a little diversity, or what exactly. But I love all the different layers that you can introduce - painting down some colors in wax, covering them with a layer of wax, adding papers, covering them with more wax, adding transfers... (oh, and by the way, I found that transfers worked much better on wax than they usually work for me in acrylic/paper so that was nice).
The clock/constellation piece is pretty close to done; I'm really not happy with the fairy piece though. In my case, that basically means that I need to add MORE, even though other people would say it means that I've added too much... There was a lovely paint/stencil layer at the bottom of this collage but there's not much left at this point. You can draw with some waxy color crayons so I might just have to add a little line or something.
I think this piece might be my favorite. It has a map buried underneath and I love just the hint of that, as well as the combination of the turquoise with a little flash of red.
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And finally, a belated birthday/engagement present for a friend. I used her save-the-date card - adding it to the collage and also basing the color palate on that. I tried a lot of different techniques on this one and it has a lot of layers. I love it. I used some found text, some of my own photographs, cut outs from magazines and field guides, stencils, various tools to make marks, black and white photocopies for transfers... So basically what is nice about encaustic is that I can add even MORE to my collages!
I have this vague idea floating around of making some Madison encaustics for the shop. First I will have to get some supplies...
