Week 25

Watercolor in Encaustic

BY PATRICIA BALDWIN SEGGEBRUCH | from Encaustic Workshop

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This week, you get to play with both paint and wax — a delightful mixture that produces vibrant and incredibly fun results. In brushing encaustic over a watercolor painting, as you'll do with the project, the watercolors become richer and transform into a wonderful foundation for further techniques, or a luminous glazed painting in and of itself.

Materials

illustration unprimed board

illustration encaustic medium

illustration heat gun or fusing tool

illustration paintbrush

illustration tubes of watercolor paints

illustration optional: watercolor paintbrush

illustration water

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1. Pool water on unprimed board

Start by pooling some water directly onto an unprimed board.

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2. Apply watercolor directly from tube

Squeeze small dollops of watercolor directly from the tube into the pool of water on the board. Add as many colors as you'd like; I've added three.

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3. Blend and spread the paints

Use a brush to spread the color around and blend it together with the water, as you choose. Or, you can also simply tilt the board to make the colors run and create some different effects, as I'm doing here.

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4. Apply medium and fuse

When the watercolor is dry, paint on a layer of encaustic medium over the board and then fuse it. This can be a finished work, or an underpainting for more layers of encaustic.