Hamid Zavareei Encautic Demo on Labor Day at the Seattle DANIEL SMITH Store

Hamid Zavareei Encautic Demo on Labor Day at the Seattle DANIEL SMITH Store

It was actually a cool Labor Day in Seattle, but it was warm in the demo room from the HOT Wax for our FREE Encaustic demo at the DANIEL SMITH Seattle Store with Hamid Zavareei.  It was interesting to see two artists (the FREE demo with Patricia Baldwin Seggebruch the day before) two days in a row showing how they work (differently) in the same hot wax medium: Encaustic.  

 
Hamid Zavareei (who is an instructor at Gage Art Academy) was presenting an introduction to encuastic and gave an excellent overview of Encaustic painting.  Hamid enjoys making his own encaustic paints in addition to using R&F Encaustics and which differs from Patricia who prefers using the ready-to-use R&F Encaustic paints.  The two artists also differ in how they work with the encaustic paints on the hot palettes as you will see.
 
Some of the pros and cons Hamid shared about making your own encaustics.
Pros:
  • You know the ingredients of what you are making.
  • Cheaper.
  • You can make whatever colors you like.
Cons:
  • You can only add so much oil paint to the wax before it becomes “oily”, so your pigment load may not be as good.  This is especially true if you use lower student grade oil paints which have less pigment than artists grade.
  • R&F makes “much nicer” encaustic paints than you can.
  • R&F are ready-to-use.
 
Making Encaustic Medium & Hot Wax Cakes/Paints:
Medium:
  • Open a tube of oil paint, lay the tube on paper towels so that excess oil is wicked out, leave for about a day.  FYI, there is less oil and more pigment in higher quality paints like DANIEL SMITH Original Oils.
  • To make the encaustic medium, melt your damar resin or crystals, impurities will settle at the bottom and strain them out with cheesecloth.
  • Melt your beeswax and strain it also with cheesecloth to remove its’ impurities.
  • Mix the strained damar resin and strained melted beeswax to make the medium. No proportions were given at demo, but recipes can be found on Internet.
Wax cakes (paints):
  • Mix in no more than 15% oil paint to wax or your encaustic will be too “oily”.
  • Pour your homemade encaustic paint into muffin tins or miniature pie pans – you want slopping sides so the wax cake is easier to “pop” out.
  • Make your cakes in small sizes so you melt only what you need when painting, because reheating over time can cause discoloration.
  • Don’t let your waxes get hot enough to smoke on the griddle.
 
“Cold” Wax technique:
  • You can also work with a “cold wax” by using Dorlands Wax Medium and mixing it with your oil paints. 
  • The technique for painting with Dorlands is more like traditional oil painting with stiff brushes and palette knives. 
  • You can also melt Dorlands on a hot palette (pancake griddle) mix in your oil paint with a palette knife, then paint the hot mix like you would with encaustic paints.
 

Hamid Zavareei mixing his encaustic paint directly on the hot palette

Hamid Zavareei mixing his encaustic paint directly on the hot palette

Palette aka Pancake Griddle:

Hamid uses his hot palette differently than most encaustic painters like Patricia.  Instead of melting wax in tins (like printmaking tins) on the hot griddle and dipping his brushes into the melted wax, Hamid applies the wax cake directly to the hot palette to melt it.   Then he uses his brush & palette knife as if he was mixing oil paint on a traditional palette and applies it to his painting surface.
 
Painting Surface:
  • Must be very absorbent – very important or your wax will eventually peel or chip off.  You want a surface that has microscopic holes so that the waxes melt into to adhere better – that’s absorbency.
  • Hamid makes his painting surfaces more absorbent by applying rabbit skin glue, or applies Golden’s Absorbent Ground Gesso (white).
  • You can use raw wood to paint on, but you lose the translucency of the wax since your ground is not white.  Chemicals in the wood could effect the colors as well.
  • Hamid likes a white ground to work on so the translucency of the wax is apparent – it’s that translucency that is the appeal to Hamid for working in wax.
 
Tools:
  • Natural bristle brushes (synthetics can melt, but Hamid does use some synthetic brushes).
  • Wax pens, they are like a soldering iron.
  • Irons.
  • Putty knives.
  • Scrapers.
  • Wood working tools.
  • Metal sculpting tools.
  • Metal pottery tools.
  • Ukrainian egg decorating tool (melted wax is used) used something like an ink pen.
  • Batik tools – melted wax is used for batik too, and the tool allows you to draw with the tool.
 
Painting Tips:
  • Heat your surface with a heat gun, a hair dryer is not hot enough.  Do not work on a cold surface, the temperature differential it too great for proper adhering.
  • Paint on a coat of the wax medium.  You can skip this step, but you will lose some translucency.
  • Use the heat gun to smooth out the over laps of the paint caused by being applied by the brush.  Keep moving the heat gun around so your wax does not blow away.  Hold your gun vertically.
  • Important:  you need to fuse each layer of paint (wax) that you add using the heat gun.
  • Hamid melts his waxes directly on the hot palette, mixes his colors on the palette with a brush (or palette knife) then paints directly on to his painting.
  • You can scrape and smooth the surface with a scraper or razor blade.
  • You can scrape or incise lines or marks with tools, then paint oil paint into the marks with a brush, then scrape and paint over with more wax.
 
Images – Embed & transfer:
Embed:
  • You can embed images in your painting by applying the paper with the image onto warmed wax.
  • Then paint wax over the paper, remember to fuse with the heat gun.
 
Image transfer:
  • Warm the wax
  • Place image face-down.
  • burnish with the back of a spoon.
  • Apply water.
  • Work water into the paper to dissolve the paper fibers.
  • Then gently rub the dissolved paper away.
 
Cleaning:
  • You can clean up with a razor blade or  ”erase” a mistake on your painting by scraping with the blade.
  • Use paraffin to clean your brushes by melting some directly on the hot palette, then working his brush into the pool of melted paraffin, and wipes with a paper towel.
 
Safety:
  • Keep a fire extinguisher on hand because if wax gets hot enough, they can catch fire.
 
Hamid finished with these thoughts for us:
 
“It’s only by doing it that you can find out how it works for you.” 
“There are things that you only learn by experimenting”. 
 
Good words to keep in mind when creating ART!
 
Thank you Hamid!
 
A good book for learning the basics of Encaustic Painting is:
 
Every Day,  Express Yourself  with  ART….
 
~Deborah Burns
 
Follow DANIEL SMITH on Twitter
Become a DANIEL SMITH Fan on Facebook