My encaustic method is an involved process of building up and tearing down layers of wax, slowly manipulating the medium and adding in texture and (often) other media. With a rough composition in my mind, my first step is to lay the initial layers of wax on my substrate.  This rarely results in the final image.  Often, the colors and quality of the wax dictate a new direction.  In my image The Storm Coming In 003, my first pass resulted in the piece at left.  After letting this sink in for a few days, I knew I had some working parts, and some parts I wanted to change. The course this image took from this first iteration to final composition is detailed below.

Preserving the pieces headed in a good direction while removing the areas in need of improvement can sometimes prove to be tricky. In this case, it was fairly straightforward - I just had to be careful where I was pointing that heat gun as I worked. The yellow was not working as I intended it to and I decided to eliminate it entirely. (In the image at left, note how the yellow area was stripped back to the substrate.) I had achieved a very nice texture in the red section above that, which I wanted to keep intact. (Notice how the midsection of the image remains unchanged throughout.) I also chose to expose more of the blue on the top that had been mostly covered in the first image.  When the first teardown cycle is complete, the image looks a little sad.  However, the direction usually solidifies in my mind as I remove areas that are not working and sculpturally add texture and meaning to sections I like. Typically, I plan out the final composition at this point, which helps me determine the order to lay down future layers of color.

Next, I embarked upon the second “addition” phase, where I layered wax back onto the image.  I also added a photograph to this composition at this point.  The photograph (of roiling water) ended up partially covered by wax, but served as inspiration for the bottom section where the wax mimics the spray of breaking water. The top “sky” area needed to appear stormier, so I added more black and tore down, melted, and smoothed the section to create a mottled effect. Each composition requires a different number of addition and subtraction cycles before the image gets to its final state.  In this case, The Storm Coming In 003 took approximately 3 “add” and 2 “tear down” phases to result in the final image, pictured at left.  This is relatively few cycles, as most of my images require more.  The final step for this image was to introduce some shells, which were tossed and broken by the breaking waves (figuratively. Literally, they were broken by the hand of the artist.) With a final buff and polish of the smooth sections, this image is done.

Notice how each iteration gets closer to the end composition and how vastly different the first and final images are.  This is something I love about the medium.  You can change and manipulate, add and subtract until you get exactly where you want the image to be.   Frequently, you even discover some “happy accidents” along the way!