Tuesday, January 18, 2011

The poppies blow.....

Here is the first picture I did in yesterday's encaustics class.  I've entitled it "the poppies blow" which is a phrase from the famous "In Flanders Field" poem.


What doesn't really show up in the photo but was my idea behind the piece is that the amount of texture increases as you come down the picture. So the sky has no texture, the green fields increase in texture and then the corn field with poppies has the most texture in the wax. 

It was created with beeswax, pigment and resin using some over-fusing for the sky to create a blend of colors then minimal fusing for the highly textured areas.

I also rubbed some oil paint into the corn field area to give a little more depth to the texture.

It taught me a lot; I got to try different techniques so was happy with it as a sampler.

My mum's first encaustic was entitled "Sun Rise". Hers seems more watercolor in style to me and she did some removing of wax and scratching in the wax for the trees, and then rubbed in some oil paints to highlight the branches etc.



In our last few minutes of the class we both also tried applying aluminum leaf to the wax. Here is mum's and she also applied graphite:


I'll show my aluminum leaf painting on Friday for my "bird a week" challenge - although you can get a glimpse here, in a photo of me and my mum.  It was great class to share together.

                                       

2 comments:

vilterietje said...

great to do stuff like that with your mum. i whish i could have done that with mine. i love the works you made. love, riet

Ruth said...

Thanks Riet. It was a lot of fun to do it together - with both of us starting from scratch. By the way- my dad, Pete, appreciated your "hello" and was asking after you. xx