Workshop: Day 2

Last night I perused my images that I wanted to use for the workshop and I combined two separate images in Photoshop to create the image I used for the work above. The tree image is a Holga image taken last November in the fog near Lions Den Park in Wisconsin and the rocks were from a Holga shot taken on our trip around Lake Superior a few years ago. Both were Lith prints that I had scanned.




Today, Mike printed the image on rice paper for me and I applied it to my waxed board, applied a layer of wax and then fused the image. Though I like minimal treatment on my images I decided to experiment and add color and texture to my board as that is exactly what a workshop is for! And as Tim Rudman said at his Lith workshop, "Sometimes you have to go too far to know you have gone far enough."

I added random shaped dots to the rock area to mimic the rocks and continued the pattern into the bottom part of the board. There was no brown pigment stick to add to the wax so I experimented with brown pastel sticks and a razor blade to scrape and smudge color into the wax. After an hour of playing with it I decided I didn't like it at all.

The beauty of Encaustics is, if you do not like it you can scrap it all off which is what I did! The wax is saved and added to a 'surprise color 'pot of used wax. Everything is always reused!

I took a small nail and incised a 'frame' around the image and then rubbed with blue and black oil pigment sticks to force color down into the scratch, rubbed off the excess color and lightly fused.
I then masked off the image with blue painters tape and began building up layers of wax around the image to create a natural frame. I liked this simpler approach to my image a lot better. I may add a bit of color with a brown pigment stick around the edges but I am happy with it as is. It is hard to see the surface and patina of this work in a digital image- or the subtle color of the wax.

I worked on another image that was printed on silk and prepared another board to be used with an image transfer using Apollo transfer sheet tomorrow.

When I got home to the motel I discovered a package from my sweet daughter for Mother's Day! A fun fisheye lens that I can use with my 35mm camera!! Cool. I could not believe she had thought to do such a thing. She actually called the motel to ask if it was OK to have something shipped there and they said sure! What a mixture of emotions- creative energy going wild, excitement over learning something new, and overwhelmed by this thoughtful gift from one of my children. What an incredible day!

I kept my emotions in check and hopped in the car to drive to one of my classmate's house for a pizza party with the group. Jane is a wonderful photographer/artist and her house has an amazing collection of artwork. What a treat to talk with fellow female photographers in such a beautiful setting.

Tomorrow is the last day of my workshop!