Creating Backgrounds

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Success Secret.

Creating backgrounds for tissue paper images and photo transfers doesn’t have to be complicated and frustrating.

I remember one student telling me, I’m not an artist. I don’t know how to paint. Show me a way to create backgrounds in which I don’t have to create it all in my imagination.

I’m going to share with you 8 beautiful, and easy ideas that you can use as inspiration for creating your backgrounds for Photo Encaustics.

These are the comments I hear repeatedly when I ask the question – “What Draws you to working with photo encaustics?”

“I feel my photography needs to be elevated beyond where it is.”

“I love the texture and the mystery. There is something about the multiple layers that draws me in.”

“I’m fascinated with the depth I see in some encaustic works”

Creating an interesting background can help you do all of this…..and so much more. Because when working with non-traditional papers and photo transfers it’s about creating a background with visual interest.

 

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#1

The easiest of backgrounds is just a solid color of wax. Here I’m using a gold encaustic paint, but you could use a blue to give a cyanotype look, or maybe a seafoam translucent, OR anything you really want. How about picking a color that you’d never expect with your image?

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#2

Mount or embed a piece of art paper. Choose something that is solid, or marbled, or geographical.

 

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#3

Play with different encaustic paint colors. They each have a slightly different density and when melted to a liquid they will begin to mix with each other in fun patterns. Just play and see how they interact. Most of it is serendipity…..but it can be a very successful background with slight nuances.

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#4

Use another image of close-up textures. You can certainly use these as backgrounds. Here are a few examples. The first is a cyanotype toned version of my camera out the car window on a bright sunny date with a slow shutter speed, then it’s a close-up and blown-out version of a of the underside of a mushroom, and lastly, a sand shot of a beach in Oregon. All three of these can be used for interesting backgrounds (either mounting the image, embedding a tissue print, or a photo transfer).

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#5

Stencils are another great way to create a background. You can use a formal stencil, or something that wasn’t intended as a stencil but might still work. This is actually a scrapbooking page at JoAnn fabrics and figured it would be a great stencil.

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#6

When I was in the art store the other day, I saw a bunch of papers that I thought would be great inspiration for creating backgrounds.

I loved this circle paper.

So, I tried to mimic the feel that I liked using pan pastels.   I’ve got a couple layers of white encaustic paint built up and I just rubbed a layer of pan pastels over the top.

I fused to a more liquid state so as the color rushed to the outside and created these circles.

Now for some photos this might be a little dark, but if you add a few light brush strokes of white and gently fuse, it makes the piece somewhat lighter in general.

Here’s yet another piece of fine art paper. This time, it was about the lines. I wanted to recreate them. But wanted them to be really thin and didn’t want to embed the paper. Here I’m going to show you how to get a similar effect using thread. It’s such a simple thing to embed in the wax…..and I rarely ever see it being done.

 

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#7

Similarly, you can choose to create blocks of color. These can either be free form or taped. Translucent or opaque colors. It all up to you.

I still hear it all the time. You need to put more color in your work. I’ll admit, I’m really drawn to monotone images. I didn’t want to change the images to color so decided to add color to the background.

Here is one of those images.

I started to use tissue paper as geometric shapes in my backgrounds. At first, I tried with colored tissue paper, but I wanted more variation in the color. So, I started to play with watercolor. I usually mix two different watercolors together to get some variation in color.

At first I just worked on my workbench and put multiple colors on the tissue and let it dry. Then I noticed that the coloration of the workbench was kinda cool. So, next time, I placed the tissue on the substrate before loading it with color. When I pulled up the tissue I had some unique geometric shapes on the substrate.

 

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#8

But my favorite way to work is to just get lost in the painting. It’s rather haphazard, but I just keep adding layers and colors until it just feels right. I use watercolors, R&F pigment sticks, translucent encaustic paint as well as opaque encaustic paints. There is no rhyme or reason to most of it. Just as easy flow of adding and subtracting colors.

Creating backgrounds is one of my favorite things to do. These are just a few of the myriad of possibilities for creating backgrounds. Let your imagination go and just play.

 

 

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I’m curious to know, what is your ‘go to’ way to create backgrounds? Let me know in the comments below.

Be well….be creative,

 

 

 

 

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