Ocean View - beeswax aceo

It's early morning, perhaps early evening, and there's a vague pinkish tinge to the sky that casts a romantic glow over the whole landscape. You're sitting on the edge of a cliff surrounded by dense scrubby foliage and listening to the shush of the ocean far below. The surface of the water is ruffled by a gentle breeze. It's a moment of peace, stolen from the busy clamour of everyday life, and just for now you feel that everything is right in your world.

It's been a while since I got the waxes out, but last night the urge to melt and dab overcame me so I gave in to it and this was the result. It's a happy reminder of why I love to paint with wax.

Floral Tangle

This is the result with the hot air gizmo mentioned below. It's okay, but despite its smaller size than a conventional hairdryer it still doesn't have the level of control that I'd like.

Hot Air

I got a new toy yesterday. It's a strange little hairdryer, shaped more like a crafting heat gun than something you'd use for drying your hair. I'm hoping it will work for creating blown effects in wax. I've had some success with an ordinary hairdryer but really there is too much air and not enough heat.

I've also tried using the crafting heat gun but that has too much heat and not enough air. I'll probably end up buying a more specialised heat tool, but for now it's fun to experiment with what I already have.

This is an example of work done with a hairdryer:


I'll post results with the new little gizmo later and compare the two

Two Sales

It's sooo rewarding when someone likes your work enough to want to buy it.

These are the two that recently went to new homes:


Both are from my 'Spiderweb' ACEO series and are my first sales of encaustic art, as mentioned previously.

Someone told me I ought to put pictures of them on here, so here they are.

ACEO upsizing

Still on the subject of the ACEO, and as an example of upsizing to hang on the wall, here's one I recently framed.

The frame itself measures approx. 9.5 x 10.5 inches with the inner mount being around an inch larger than the ACEO in the centre. I gave the image two mats, one white and one pale green, and glued the whole thing into the centre of the back board.

Oh, and the frame cost a couple of quid from a charity shop. It housed a rather grubby looking piece of cross stitch which was quickly and easily removed, but the frame and mount are clean and presentable.

Bargain!

ACEO Fascination

ACEOs are fascinating me at the moment.

For a long time before I started encaustic art dabbling I made greetings cards, and it was this interest that first introduced me to the idea of creating miniature works of art in the form of an ATC (Artists Trading Card). At first I couldn't see the point. Why spend hours fiddling about with something that measures just 2.5 by 3.5 inches and isn't even a card you can send to someone? You couldn't even sell these tiny little cards because the whole point of them was that you made them to swap with other ATC creators.

I just didn't get it.

A while later I came across the expression ACEO (Art Cards, Editions and Originals), and this made a little more sense because at least they could be offered for sale.

Still, such tiny little things. What were people supposed to do with them? And yet the more I delved into the art/craft world, the more I realise they were everywhere.

Fast forward a couple of years, and encaustic art enters my life. Suddenly, the delight that is the ACEO dawns on me:

• Restrictions and boundaries: The size is strict. If it isn't 2.5 by 3.5 inches, it's not an ACEO. This in itself, although it sounds limiting, gives a kind of freedom. By ruling out so many other possibilities the artistic field is narrowed and the focus is tightened.
• Challenge: I can only liken it to writing. It often takes far longer to write a really short story than it does to write a longer one. So too with art. Working on such a tiny area and trying at the same time to make the picture mean something, say something, have some aesthetic appeal is quite a job. With encaustic art, the iron is bigger than the picture so it's easy to obliterate something you wanted to keep.
• Versatility: Store it in a collector's album, hang it on the wall, post it to a friend as a gift, call it a topper and put it on a greeting card - it's small enough to do just about any job you'd want a picture to do.
  
• Affordability: We all have a sense of the value of the 'one-off', the 'original'. To own something that you know is the only one in the world, especially in today's mass-produced world, is special. Original art is beyond the means of most people. Including me. But just about everyone can afford an ACEO.

And quite apart from those practical realisations, they're just so much fun - and maybe that's all the reason that's really needed!

The Pleasure and the Pain

Can you have too much of a good thing?

Not only do I get my first ever blog comment this morning (Pat of On a Whimsey - thanks for dropping by), but I also made my first ever encaustic sales on ebay. Two encaustic works are on their way to a new home.

No, not the little fish below, he's still swimming around looking for someone to love him, but a couple of ACEOs in my Spiderweb series. As I look at them sitting here on my desk there's a part of me that doesn't want to part with them. But then again, to think that someone actually wants to buy them is just amazing.

I wonder if other people feel like this about selling their work - totally torn between the excitement of someone swapping their cash for something you've created and the feeling that this is your baby and belongs at home with its creator.

I'm used to the pain versus pleasure aspect of selling my writing and seeing my words in print, but this parting-with-artwork-pain is something I didn't expect.

Plus I worry that my buyer will get the paintings and hate them. Ack!! Sometimes I need a good smack.

PS - Just to balance things out and make sure I don't get too cocky this morning, a rather large council tax bill just landed on my doormat! Talk about thumping back down to earth!!!

Scry Fish

I haven't posted here for a while, but that doesn't mean I haven't been creating more encaustic little pictures.

The scry aspects of encaustic artwork are fascinating. Mine usually come about by happy accident, because I've been trying to do something else and it hasn't worked to my liking. Frustration takes over and the iron goes down with a plonk over the whole thing. That's the beauty of working with encaustic wax. A displeasing picture can be very quickly and very satisfyingly blotted out.

Sometimes a little miracle happens. I can't remember what this picture was originally supposed to be but it certainly wasn't a fish. He only made his appearance when I lifted the iron of destruction.

The painting is an ACEO, so it only measures 2.5 by 3.5 inches. He's up for sale at the moment on ebay.

Haunted Castle ACEO

Something I've recently discovered is a lot of fun to do, is paint in miniature. Well, I suppose they could be much smaller, but the particular miniatures I'm talking about are ACEO sized.

By definition, an ACEO (which stands for Art Card Editions and Originals), must measure 2.5 by 3.5 inches. No more, no less. There is little difference between an ACEO and an ATC (Artist's Trading Card) other than the fact that an ACEO may be sold, and an ATC must be either given away or swapped for another ATC. Just how you'd decide which was which if you came upon one by itself, all alone in a dark alley with no-one to vouch for it, I don't know. Maybe you'd just decide for yourself depending on whether you liked it or not. If it didn't appeal you could call it an ACEO and sell it on; if you wanted to keep it then it has to be an ATC which can't be sold. Maybe I'm missing the point and some kind soul will set me straight.

As I'm interested in the possibility of selling my artwork, I'm creating ACEOs and have started a 'spiderweb' series. This Haunted Castle is the first in the series. Anyone interested in buying? It's a snip at £4.99 post free in the UK. Drop me an email if you want it (de6sutton at googlemail dot com). Seriously. If you're outside the UK, I'll work out what the postage would be.

I'm not sure how many there will be in the series, or even if that's something I'm supposed to decide before I publicise them. Or, come to that, whether I'm supposed to have finished the series first. In any case, I've done none of those things. The series will run until I get fed up with it, and so far I've finished 3.

ACEO technicalities aside, suffice it to say it's giving me a great deal of fun and satisfaction to make these little pictures at the moment.

Misty Morning

This was one of those that came about more by happy accident than anything else. Not the image itself, but the colours, which perfectly capture the atmosphere of an early autumn, misty morning, grassland. Originally the painting looked very different, but I didnt' like it. I'd gone over it so many times that the colours were muddy, to say the least.

In fact, it was a mess.

A few frustrated sweeps with the iron and most of the colour was gone, leaving behind a kind of grey, messy looking staining that I immediately liked and knew I could do something with. This was painted over the top of the original.

The feather grasses were created with the brush tool on the stylus, and the overall faded appearance was achieved by placing the whole of the painting on the iron and allowing the wax to melt and run together.

Result? One atmospheric, misty morning. Happy with this one.

View Beyond

Encaustic Abstract. Trees? Stems? Vines? Leaves? What's in the opening? Mountains? Castles? You decide.

Going Abstract

Whilst nothing about encaustic painting is ever totally controllable - at least not for me - abstracts are more random than ever. A certain level of control over the colours is possible, and the type of marks the iron is going to leave are controllable, but otherwise it's all something of a mystery tour.

Images appear as if by magic - actually I think it's all magic - and the trick is to stop when you get a result you like. That's perhaps the hardest part. Knowing when to stop. There is always the temptation to apply the heat one more time, and end up undoing something you wish you'd kept.

Encaustic paintings are almost infinitely changeable. Keep on heating, and eventually the colours will run together and you'll end up with a muddy mess, but even this isn't permanent. It's possible to scrape the offending mud off and apply new, clear colour. Sometimes this produces even more pleasing effects than the original. See Misty Morning, above, as this is an example of a painting on top of a painting that went horribly wrong.

However, back to abstracts, and the difficulty of stopping at the right point. Very often, less is more. Just because one application of the iron produced a good result doesn't mean that a reapplication will make it even better. I often forget that the iron will undo what's already there. My mind goes back to conventional painting where it's possible to rework existing areas without completely altering the base. In encaustic this isn't possible.

Lesson: If it looks good. Stop.

Tree and Path

One thing I love about encaustic art is the unpredictability of it. You never quite know what you're going to get, or whether the result will be good or bad. Maybe when you're better at it than I am, being a real beginner, it becomes more controllable, but right now it's trial and error. And usually more error than anything else. I make far more messes than anything else.

This tree and path is my latest effort. My own critique? Overall it's quite pleasing, but I'm not happy with the colour or definition of my mountains and the little fence stumps at the end of the path could be anything. One thing I would love to learn to do is put shadows in. This could do with some shadow beneath the tree, but how to do this with wax is beyond me at the moment.

My trees are getting better though :)

Palmtree

Quite pleased with this. It came about through playing and wanting to do something a bit different with foregrounds. Like the foxgloves below, it's an image I'm happy to use on notelets.

Foxgloves

This little pic was done around October 2008. It's still one of my favourites and even though I've tried to recreate it a couple of times, I can't do it. It's one of the frustrating things about trying to learn something new - things happen by accident and you've no idea how you did it.

For instance, I can't for the life of me do foxgloves anymore! I suppose these must have been beginners luck and I need a lot more practice before I can paint them on demand. The same goes for the mountains in the distance. I like the way these tail off into a headland stretching out into the water, and they do seem to be just the right shape and size for the perspective of the picture.

The foreground is muted, with the iron marks not being as obvious as in many encaustic paintings, and this, again, was achieved through happy accident. I laid the finished painting on top of the iron so that the wax melted.

Crippled Dragonfly

Trying dragonflies. Not easy is it? This one looks as though it's either got an extra wing or a broken leg. By now I have got a stylus and a whole new world opens up. There is so much to this art form that I want to try that I just wish there were more hours in a day.

Having no art training, and certainly having no painting ability whatsoever, encaustic work is a real revelation to me. To be able to produce little pictures like this, that actually look like something real and recognisable gives me a real sense of achievement.

Early attempts

This is one of the first encaustic pics I painted. The path is pretty naff but the rest I was quite pleased with. I like the colours. It was done entirely with the iron.

New Passion - New Blog

I discovered Encaustic Art last september at a craft show. A lady called June Drake was demonstrating basic encaustic techniques and I was hooked.

This was the first time I'd seen encaustic art 'live'. Previously I'd only seen it on television. That was intriguing enough, but to actually see these marvelous little pictures appearing so effortlessly (or so it seemed), using just a lump of pigmented beeswax and a small iron - I couldn't resist. Had to get myself some kit.

We (my daughter and I) bought a starter kit from June, and have been hooked ever since. A stylus has been added to our tool kit, and more is planned. I'm no artist, but with encaustic art even I can create artwork I'm proud of.

I intent charting my encaustic progress in this blog. I'll post a few paintings and invite comments. You're welcome to join me in my new journey.