Today was make-a-batch-of-encaustic-medium day. It is the most toxic part of the process, with resin dust wafting through the air (or sucked out the window with proper ventilation) and wax heated to a temperature a little too close to its flash point. For me, this is the “chore” section of working with encaustic, though I derive a strange satisfaction from seeing the finished bricks lined up and waiting to create something new.

I begin with resin crystals. They come in all sizes and of various clarity. All are sure to have bark and debris in them, but so far I have not discovered any bugs. Surely some small critters get trapped in there occasionally.

To aid in the speed of melting, the resin crystals are crushed in a mortar and pestle to a powder. The powder is then melted with a portion of the wax. This is done because the melting point of the resin is much higher than the melting point of wax.

Once the small portion of wax and resin are thoroughly mixed, the remainder of the wax is melted in at a safer, lower temperature. Nobody likes wax vapor becoming an ignitable mixture in the air. After the wax has melted into the resin mixture, the fluid is poured through cheesecloth to filter out the imperfections trapped in the resin, then into molds to cool.It takes a good couple of hours for the wax to cool completely. When it does, it is popped out of its molds and stored away until the day it is remelted, mixed with pigment, and transformed from wax lump to composition.