Learning encaustic photography is so far, for me, a 360º trip from Photoshop to Encaustics back to Photoshop.
I am trying to see if I can complete a piece in encaustics and so far my track record is not stellar. Partly because my skills need more practice but also because in some cases I simply prefer the digital photograph to the encaustic one.
I began this experiment with one of what I call my “Jabberwocky/nonsense” images: an allium blossom and a rainbow carrot. No, of course, they don’t make sense but I liked the whimsy of it and the contrasting colors and textures. I believe Lewis Carroll’s nonsense poem “Jabberwocky” was meant to be untelligible but whimsical. In fact, I think he even asked the publisher if they could publish a mirror image of it to further make his point! They said, “No, it costs too much to do it.”
So, in that Lewis Carroll spirit, I textured the image with the idea that I was going to transfer the image (printed a mirror image) on to a waxed 4 x 4in board. I did the transfer. Not totally successfully but better than some of my others.
I painted the image with encaustic pigments and oil sticks and then scrapped too much of the carrot away with a potter’s scraper.
The whole point of my jabberwocky is that you need to know it is a allium and a carrot to appreciate the whimsy, so having a “sort of” yellow something underneath the flower wasn’t conveying the nonsense part. I didn’t think just a little strategic dabbing of yellow color with paint was going to do it, either.
So, I photographed it as it was and then layered the original image over the encaustic photo and ended up with a digital photo of the encaustic piece.
Later, I’ll print this and mount on another board and see if a layer of wax and pigment color around the edges will be the final form.
Stay tuned.
