A few months ago my friend Fran Skiles (if you want to see some fabulous paintings, look at her website!) showed me the book Cold Wax Medium by Rebecca Crowell and Jerry McLaughlin. It is a gorgeous book and I was immediately interested in this technique I'd never heard of.
I have been asked more than once if my work is encaustic, I guess because of the layering I do with acrylic paint. The necessity of having a pot of hot wax in the studio had always kept me from experimenting with it. It seemed like a lot of trouble. But with cold wax, it appeared, one could get the intriguing layers without the fuss.
On line I found a workshop in cold wax medium and oil with Cindy Walton (another great website to check out) in Asheville and signed up.
The first part of the process was to mix oil paint with the cold wax and apply it to wood panels with a squeegee, let it get somewhat dry and repeat using another color. This resulted in a substantial thickness of wax on the surface of the board.
By the end of that first day I knew I was in trouble. I couldn't stand not being able to get to the surface of the work. I had a visceral reaction to the thick wax buildup. Everyone else in the class was happily creating rich, colorful layers. I ended up scraping all my wax off and getting enormous relief from being able to feel the the hard wood of the panel again.
I could then draw and score and scrape and apply thinner layers of wax with which I found my comfort zone. The wax does lend itself to line and I used pencils, pins and sticks to draw into the thin layers. I was frustrated that those lines were not as strong as I wanted them to be, being used to the black line of charcoal over my acrylic paintings. If I were to continue to experiment with this medium I would start with black gesso under the wax so that drawn lines would appear darker.
When I got the pieces home I did more to them. I added bits of paper collage using my collection of thin papers I've painted and stamped. Tissue, deli paper and wax paper are a good weight to use with this medium and adhere well. The fact that the paintings had sat for a few days helped with this, too. The wax was just tacky enough to accept the collage without being too soft. I was able to apply a very thin coat of the cold wax to the backs of the pieces of paper and burnish them into place. I also added details with straight oil paint over the wax. Because I'm used to painting with acrylic I found painting details with oils challenging, so I didn't do very much of that or anything very complicated. Of course I couldn't use the acrylic over the oil, but you knew that. (Oil over acrylic is fine, but never acrylic over oil unless you want your painting to peel off.)
So here they are. All 12" X 12" X 2". Materials used: oil paint, cold wax medium, charcoal, pastel (Incidentally, when using powdered pigment it is best to put a non-stick paper over the surface and burnish the powder into the wax.), painted deli and wax paper, tea bags
This was the last one in the bunch to work on. I was getting ready to add paper collage and accents of oil paint when Judy happened to walk into the studio to see how things were going on these new pieces. She talked me into leaving this one as is, saying it was in no need of any more enhancement. It was tough, but I complied!
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