ENCAUSTIC TREE SPIRIT

 Hello Friends,

I recently started making encaustic art again and I'm so glad to be back at it.

This piece is done on a ceramic tile with watercolour paper glued to the surface. It's necessary to have both a porous and rigid surface for encaustic work.

After several layers of encaustic medium, fusing between layers with a heat gun, I used a stencil and metal sculpting tool to incise a faux wood grain into the wax. I rubbed R&F oil stick paint into the lines and wiped the surface with a dry paper towel, so some of the colour would remain on the surface. I added a thin layer of encaustic medium to seal it and fused again. That was the end of Stage One.

Next I collaged a rice paper fairy (Maremi's Small Art) and two maple leaves I collected from our tree. The leaves were dried and brittle. I dipped them in the encaustic medium and thought that would preserve them but it was an epic fail. That was Stage Two.

It looks lumpy at the bottom but it is only the reflection.

The wax gobbed around the leaves and they remained brittle.

Stage Three was to remove the leaves and scrape back some of the encaustic where it was cloudy.

I scraped back too much in some places, removing the colour.

 In Stage Four I added two more rice paper collage pieces. It was still cloudy looking. It seemed flat, dull and uninteresting to me. I had to let it sit for a few days.

Little pieces of the maple leaves remained, which I really like.

I began to notice the suggestion of a tree and decided to incise the lines I saw for it. Again I used my incising tools and R&F paint sticks to bring the tree to life. I painted over parts of the collaged pieces and added a wee bunny, just popping out of his burrow. That was Stage Five of "Tree Spirit" and I'm calling it done.

Thank you for visiting. I hope you enjoyed going on this little encaustic journey with me.

hugs & smiles,

Teresa