Fawn Potash & Danielle Correia : Encaustics & Photography

(just to warn you, this post is kinda crazy with photos, but they all seemed necessary!)

Our Encaustics workshop was a small, intensive, 4-day class with an amazing group of people. Our teachers, Danielle Correia and Fawn Potash, are wonderful teachers and artists who have been involved in encaustics for years.

Until a few weeks ago, I had no idea what “encaustics” were. The process involves applying and painting with hot wax and pigments. Our workshop was “Encaustics & Photography,” so the majority of our pieces started with a base image. We began the weekend at the Center making cyanotypes, preparing digital negatives, printing straight images, and prepping panels to use as the basis for our encaustic projects. Here are Jill and Daly hand-coloring some photos to use as the background for a panel:


And our cyanotypes! It was great because we were able to spend time working outside. The process involves coated paper (prepped by the interns), a negative, UV light, and water (and peroxide, if you want to bump up the contrast of the print).



We also went over toning of cyanotypes. An original produces a range of blue tones, but Fawn taught us how you can use chemicals and varying orders to turn them to red, purple, brown, etc…


On Monday and Tuesday we met at R&F’s building in Kingston, NY.
We spent the majority of those days in this room:



Having a small class was nice because it gave us all enough room to spread out. Jill and John, however, chose to share a table together. They came to this CPW Workshop as a gift to themselves, celebrating their 35th wedding anniversary. They were an amazingly adorable team the entire time – they printed together, prepped together, and encaustic-ed (hmm…that’s probably not a word) together. For each panel, John would coat, Jill would work on it, John would give his input & work a little, and then she would refine. Everyone loved seeing their constant encouragement and cooperation.


Against a separate wall was the coating station. Each panel begins with a few coats of wax fused with heat guns. This helps protect the image from deteriorating once you start painting and carving into it.


I loved how the simple process of applying wax and fusing it to get a smooth surface looked on a straight photograph. The smaller your panel, the easier it is to get a smooth surface. I used these two 5 x 7 inch photographs to try that technique. I was really surprised at how different an image can look with just a few layers of wax:


Danielle was the representative from R&F that coordinated the demonstrations at their studio. Here she is teaching them the basics of applying and fusing layers.


She demonstrated a ridiculous number of techniques and tools, basically showing how almost anything is possible to experiment with. This shot is just a handful of tools that I found on Danielle’s workstation.


And here, she is demonstrating how to dip an image:


I really loved how the dipped paper looked, too – it takes on this translucent quality and makes the paper stiff enough to work with, but still fragile enough to maintain the quality of paper without being attached to a board. When it comes to encaustics, apparently I’m a bit of a purist. I did one copy of each image in a recent project...i hope to go back and stitch into them:


Being a workshop, we were all encouraged to at least try every technique we learned about. Another technique is combining pigment sticks with encaustics. These oil-based pigment sticks give a much bolder look and let you paint directly on the surface – kind of like a big crayon. Here are just a sampling of the colors they had available:


I tried it in two different applications. First, by carving into a wax coated panel while painting with encaustic:


…and on a dipped paper, which is obviously much more delicate. I’m not saying it’s a work of art, but this is how that one turned out:


I was really impressed with how well Daly incorporated both aspects into her panels – and her workstation definitely proved it:



Nikki, on the other hand, got really into using photos as a base and using the encaustics as a straight painting method.


At the end of the last day we spent some time going around the room and seeing how everyone’s tests turned out. I was shocked at how good everything turned out! Here is Daniella, my table partner and an R&F instructor in California, showing the class and instructors all of her experimentation:


Laula created one of my favorite pieces from the weekend. She kept it very simple, just using the pigments sticks with encaustic to draw over an original photograph:


It was a great 4 days – everyone was really excited to learn and play around with all the new material. We really couldn’t have asked for a better group to take this workshop. It was really cool to learn it myself, too. Encaustic is not a very well known form of art, but it is growing in popularity and recognition. The natural materials and process made it even more interesting to my tastes. And now that I have had time to try the methods on my own, I have even more respect for those who practice it professionally!

(The two happy interns for the workshop, Nikki Tappa and myself)