More wax work -- playing to learn

I continue to have fun playing with wax. Or "making encaustics," which sounds more professional and mysterious. I'm still at the very beginning (if there was preschool for encaustic students, that's where I'd be). 

I love this stage of mastering a new skill. Mistakes are expected and everything seems magical. Here are some of my experiments.


The patch below looks like one of those ancient cave paintings, don't you think? These marks come from incising the wax using different tools. I used a ball chain to make the lines of dots and a pottery carving tool to make the lines. Can you guess what made the right angles?

That's right -- a bobby pin! I embedded it in this patch of green.

 Here's a tic-tac-toe design using complementary colors.

 

Stripes in orange gold and raw umber. The blotches of reddish brown are made by adding dots of oil paint and then wiping across the surface.

This was fun -- burying pieces of black cord under a layer of wax. I used the round end of a spool to make the circles.

My teacher showed me how to layer different colors of wax and then shave the layers off to create this cool effect. These circles remind me of eerie planets or microscopic viruses.