Fun Easy Art, John Vandebrooke [top 5 books to read .TXT] 📗

My Journey With Wax Painting


It all started when I saw first encaustic painting at a gallery in Gig Harbor, Washington seven years ago. I had a second sighting a month later at a gallery in Whistler, B.C., where a large collection of wax paintings caused me to stop in my tracks. Researching this media online, I found Michael Bossom’s website and learned about the European style using hot tools to melt and paint with wax. I ordered all of his supplies and launched into wax painting on my own. Within a few months I joined a co-op art gallery in Edmonds, Washington. Soon after that a scrapbook store owner asked me to teach this process to her customers, and a local civic group asked if I would give a talk on the subject. It was instant lift off, and I have been in flight ever since.

Melting the wax with an iron, and the user-friendly way the wax behaves, is quite a draw for most people. I introduce this art form to students in my classes and demonstrations. I like to call it advanced kindergarten for all the fun one has in the process of creating an art piece. For example, I created the wax painting below using a pancake griddle! I placed a large A2 sized paper (A2 is a European measurement that’s about 17 x 24 inches) on the griddle and heated it while touching wax blocks directly to the paper – and then watched the magic happen. For smaller paper, I use the iron in the hot plate mode to create the same look.

Christmas Ribbons

In this short introduction to the subject I will share with you some of the ways I have found to work with this style of wax painting. Be careful, as it’s an addictive process and I can attest to its lure even after hours and hours of painting.


Let us begin by taking a look at the tools for this European style of wax painting. Instead of heating tins of wax on a hot plate as is typically used by encaustic artists, we will use only hot tools: an iron, and some smaller hot tools that fit into a stylus, which will melt the wax and work as our brushes. There are three boxes of wax to choose from: a starter box

of 16 landscape colors with gold and silver, an expanded box

that includes the colors that lie between the colors of the starter set and are more pastel, and the vivid set

that are blending and more transparent colors.



In the first attempts to learn this process I suggest a student work on a gloss card stock, which allows the wax to move after it has cooled and is reheated. This allows one to alter the picture. Also, this surface creates vivid colors that are bright and blend with ease. After the wax sets, it can be polished with a cloth or tissue – and to protect the surface it can be covered with a wax coating or even with Future floor polish.

The stylus with the different points

Wax Sealer


The history of this art form goes back to the Egyptians some 2,000 years ago, but Michael Bossom’s method is only about 25 years old. The difference is that his method lays down thin skins of wax instead of thick layers seen in the more traditional method using brushes. This fluid style is one that suits me. When I teach this method I begin by creating abstract pictures with a student, so that they see the patterns the wax can make. Those patterns can result in very realistic paintings once one has mastered them.

We will begin by exploring a series of different sky patterns. Once you have painted five or six skies to choose from, you can begin to put different landscape patterns under them. A rolling hills pattern is a bit tricky to learn, because it is like rubbing your stomach and patting your head at the same time. You have to make two motions: paint a lazy Figure 8 pattern (on its side like the infinity symbol) and then travel down the page with the iron held horizontal. This will create a series of hills and a valley running down the middle of the page. How you load the iron with the wax is also a factor. I melt various green colors on the face-plate of the iron to create grass, and then melt brown onto the upper edge of the iron, which will be the top of the hills.



A quick swipe of the iron will finish the bottom and then, with a lifting motion, create a landscape pattern of grasses.

Rolling Hills

From this pattern the student will go on to learn mountains and mesas. Each of these have many variations. Once there is a nice collection of sky and landscape patterns, you can start using the stylus to insert many details into those pictures. Birds, trees, cacti, and flowers are a good starting point. The tools become more and more comfortable the more they are used and the artist gains control.

A fun process to learn is painting with tissue that is soaked with wax. These wax pads create a look that is not possible with just the tools alone. By pushing the wax through the tissue onto the surface, it shows the texture of the tissue in the process. This makes very nice rocks and mountains. It has a look like sumi ink painting. While the wax is still warm you rub with your fingers to create shading. Here is a painting of a pond that Michael Bossom created as an example of this method. He soaked the pad with three colors to create this look. I painted the mountain picture, creating the rock-like looks by smudging the wax while it was still warm with my finger. I find this process a lot of fun, and I like the Asian feel it produces. To add to that look I use a chop mark for a signature, my name carved into the stone.

Painting with tissue pads

Wax pad painting with waxed sky background

Another process to try is to take a painting like this mountain picture and turn it over on top of some fabric. If you heat the back side of the card with the iron, you will transfer this picture onto the cloth. If using a non-absorbent surface it will transfer, but also blur and blend – creating a whole different picture. This process is called “mono printing” and it can be used to enhance your paintings in many different ways. Sometimes I take strips of card stock loaded with wax to mono print certain areas onto larger pieces that I’m working on.

I often hear the phrase, “I’m not an artist and I can’t draw” from potential students. I tell them that they are perfect for encaustic painting. There are many ways they can create beautiful pictures without drawing, offering them a way out of that excuse. You can use photographs, rubber stamps, image transfers with gel medium, or ink jet pictures to name a few. Those alone can keep you busy for a while.

You can use transfer papers to turn your finished art work into jewelry, such as domino pendants. I reduce JPEGs of my art to 1 x 2 inches and print them with my ink jet printer onto decal transfer paper. I drop these into a water bath one by one, and then slip off the decal onto the domino. That’s just one new way to work with your existing art pieces. Using the same process you can also put the decal on an absorbent surface like canvas or wood, then sink it into the surface by coating it with turpentine. This will melt the decal image into the background surface.

I have a friend in the gallery who is a photographer and I kept encouraging him to experiment with different ways to present his art. I asked for one of his images and then used the above technique with his image – one on wood, with just a cropped section of his image, and another using the whole image on stretched canvas. You could do this with a JPEG of any of your art.



Sam Spencer's Photo Image on Canvas


This image was placed on a cradled board, the exposed wood painted with iron oxide and then rusted with a chemical. For the image on stretched canvas, I again used iron oxide to paint the exposed canvas and treated it with a chemical to alter the look, adding a bit of brown to match the photo.



Can you imagine what you could do with rubber stamps? Take the stamp and create an ink impression on your surface, then coat it with clear wax to protect the image. This will make the next coat of wax more transparent by thinning the pigments. You will be able to see through the wax to the stamped pattern, then take the stylus and fill in the image with details using the pen tip. Now go one step further and take a line drawing printed with an ink jet printer on regular printer paper. Dip the back side of these prints into a bath of clear wax, and then begin to wax the front side with the iron and stylus. This dipping into the clear wax makes the paper become translucent and gives it a smooth surface to use the stylus. For the next picture, I painted in the sky on the back side of the paper so that the look would be very soft on the front side of the paper. I love to discover these tricks and pass them on to my students.

Waxed image off inkjet print

Soft effects also can be achieved by using hot air. I started with just a hair dryer, but these have too much air and not enough heat. I next tried an embossing gun, but that had too much heat and not enough air. With one in each hand I could get the effect I wanted, but not a lot of control. Finally, I bought a professional heat gun from Sears that had temperature and air control allowing me to dial in the exact amount of each. With this tool I could create wonderful skies and fantasy flowers. Here is one example of the effect of hot air on the wax, created on a large mirror. This piece I gifted to a local nonprofit organization I am working with to save a historic home in my city. I was gifted back with this wonderful description of the painting: “Nebula is a cosmic arrangement of colorful swirls and spatters applied with heat to the surface of a mirror, created by a local sage who understood that art is a window into the Universe through which people can see reflections of themselves.”


Nebula, wax on a mirror



The next picture is an example of a fantasy floral image using this same