Experimenting with Wax Collage

I requested a Ranger melt pot for my birthday last year. I made a project for an exhibition in a mad rush but I have not experimented since. This year as my birthday approached again I felt I really should get it back in use. I used a piece of off cut wood donated by my husband. I coated it with two layers of encaustic gesso. next I lay out my design.

I put down the first layer of wax let it dry and then fused it by gently heating the layer to bond it to the layer below. Then I dipped the piece of encyclopedia paper  into the wax and lay it down onto the surface and coated it in a layer of wax. As soon as this was done I remembered of course the wax made the paper translucent and both sides showed through so it just made a confusing mess.

Just sharing the real process, warts and all! Well the good thing about wax is you can melt it off and start again. So I got rid of this layer and remembered I wanted to try some collage using stamped tissue. The next hour was spent choosing and stamping a collection of nature images onto some regular tissue. I tore all the edges so it would blend into the background more easily. I also wanted to try and experiment with colouring the layers. At this point I became engrossed and took no more pictures. I used oil pastels and rubbed them onto the now waxy board. I Next put a layer on top of the pastel. This did not work well, the pastel pooled giving a patchy effect. I melted and scraped this off and then tried watercolour paint but that just resisted the wax and sat in dots on the surface. I scraped it off and then put all my blue stained wax into the pot. this melted into a nice coloured wax which I used for the rest of my layers.

By this stage I had learnt a lot but was not happy with the results. I wanted a more even surface and the blue over the images made the images disappear too much. The lace embedded in wax was the only element I loved. I do like the colour but I want to achieve a more mysterious effect. Of course at this point it is all learning and I am happy with experimenting with wax for many hours to come.

I decided to go ahead and post and share this experiment. I have requested a few more off-cuts to try again and will post the next experiment.