Mixed Media Encaustic Painting

Tutor : Mo Godbeer

Materials to be supplied by the student

Paints
You can buy Louvre (Lefranc & Bourgeois) or Georgian Oils quite cheaply to make your colours. You can also use dry pigments, but please bring a mask to use when mixing these into your wax. A 60ml tube of Louvre is around $6 depending on where you buy it; and the Georgian Oils are about $7-$8 for a 38ml tube.
It has to be oil paint; acrylics do not work with this process. You could bring some oil pastels or oil sticks to draw back into your work. Mo will show you how to make your own encaustic medium and encaustic paints and you may like to share waxes with fellow students to get a good range of colours. But these are a few things that you can bring to use in your work.

Colours
When working in encaustic as a beginner it is good to start off with lighter colours until you get the hang of the medium. Choose a range of colours you like to work with and that go together. But make sure you have a white, as this is a must. Mo will bring a few colours that you can use also.
If you are unsure what to buy then get a white, a blue, soft yellow (lemon yellow) and a red, that way you will be able to mix and make a good range of other colours.
If you want to be able to mix colours, please bring a palette or plastic plate to do this on and a paint spatula to mix with.

Brushes
We need cheap natural bristle brushes for wax, remember you will be dipping this brush into hot wax, so synthetic brushes are no good.
You will need one brush per each colour of wax you want to make, so at least 6 brushes at a minimum. Once the brush has been used for wax it cannot be used for any other type of painting. The great thing is that you never have to wash your brushes again! Once its’ waxed, its’ waxed forever so don’t bring your best brushes.
If you buy a few sizes, it should cover what you will need, they need not be expensive. The medium ones are good for applying clear wax and will need to be kept only for clear.

Mo also uses Hake Brushes – the two larger sizes are the best – they are made by a company called ‘Reno’ and also Monte Marte makes them – they are approx $10-$15 each.

Surfaces
We will work on plywood to begin with. The substrate for encaustic needs to be ridge but some absorbence.

10 x plywood boards, 7mm thick and about 25cm x 25cm. You may like to get a couple of larger sheets to try
but some bigger work. You have these cut at Bunnings, Mitre 10 or Mr Plywood. Plywood usually costs around
$15-$30 per sheet depending on how big the sheet is you buy.

Paper is a little bit more challenging to work with than board and takes a bit more skill. If you want to work on
paper as well as board, you will need the paper to be at least 220gsm watercolour paper. You can work on
handmade paper and also some of the Japanese papers such as Washi, kinwashi, kitakata, unryu, kozo or
mulberry, lokta or printmaking papers such as Rives BFK. Shiny papers do not work.

Tools
Mark making tools such as ceramic, shed, printmaking, dental, culinary tools , scraping tools e.g. pottery
scrapers are fantastic for working with wax and if you happen to have any old (clean of course!) dental tools,
they work really well also.

Collage

Old prints, drawings, watercolour, tempera or gouache paintings. Works on paper. If you are not sure if it will
work with wax, Mo can advise you on the day. Handmade papers, or papers you like working with – washi, rice
paper, Yuzen papers

Materials/found objects to embed into your work e.g. old papers, tissue paper, dress patterns, light weight
fabrics, grasses and dried plants, leaves etc. Anything you would like to experiment with.
You can use old maps, lace, silk, thread, muslin, newspaper, pages from books – papers with shiny surfaces
don’t work well.

Miscellaneous

small cat food or tuna tins (100gm size) to put the made wax medium into to colour your wax
sewing kit
Stanley knife
scissors
thread, yarn, twine
buttons
rusty bolts, nails and any bits of rusty stuff you may have laser/photocopied printed images – ink jet does not work for image transfer onto wax – but don’t worry too much, Mo will have some images you can use to try this out on the day

If you have a heat gun or an electric hotplate (frypan) or both it would be great if you can bring this along – don’t forget to have it tagged and tested!

There will be a materials fee for wax, it won’t be very much and will depend on how many students enrol in the workshop.

Coffee mug     Tea, coffee, milk and sugar are not supplied by the School.  Classes pool funds to buy supplies for the week which can be stored in the Tea Room provided.  Please note that students are responsible for keeping their allocated tea room clean and tidy.

IMPORTANT:  All electrical equipment required for your class at USQ must be ‘tag-tested’ by a qualified electrician prior to arrival in order to comply with safety rules. Eg: extension cords and hair dryers etc.

Estimated material cost: $0 to $100.00