For those of you who know my work, I use an enormous amount white encaustic paint. And occasionally I’m in a pinch and run out of the commercial white encaustic paint.
Commercial encaustic paints are made from beeswax, damar, and pigment (usually a pigment powder or dispersion pigment which is formulated to be light on oil and heavy on pigment.) But most of us don’t have dispersion pigments around—however, we do have artist grade oil paints. Oil and wax are totally compatible, you just need to make sure to keep the volume of oil paint to significantly less than the wax. In other words if you get close to a 50/50 mixture of oil to wax the mixture won’t hold together and you end up with a waxy paint that won’t harden or an oily wax that doesn’t dry. Best practice is to keep the oil paint to under 20%.
To begin I squeeze the oil paint (use artist grade oil paint and make sure it doesn’t have the addition of alkyd, a drying agent) on to a paper towel and let it sit overnight. This will allow some of the linseed oil in the paint to be drawn out.
There really isn’t a formula as every artist has a different idea of the perfect mixture. As always, experiment. My favorite approach is the hit-and-miss approach where I invent as I go along. I now have a general idea of how much color needs to be added to the wax to create the right translucency for me and my work.
Others may want to create a specific recipe through experimentation and be able to replicate the mixture time and time again.
After your oil paint has leeched out some of the linseed oil you are set to simply mix it into a container with melted encaustic medium.
Mix well.
Pour into silicone molds.
It’s that simple.
But it’s not the same as a commercially manufactured encaustic paint. It has a waxier finish to it. So I only do this when I’m in a pinch or have a color I specially mix for a painting and want to turn it into an encaustic paint color. Otherwise I let the experts stick to what they do best and use paints from Enkaustikos or R&F.
Tell me, what has been your experience with mixing your own encaustic paints?
Be well….be creative,
This is the method I use also. Very easy to do. Thanks for the update!
This is great Clare. I’ve got all sorts of paints in my studio from bygone days. Looking forward to seeing what encaustic paints I can now create.
thanks Clare- I was looking at your 2016 classes and although the horse one sounds wonderful to me, my kids from Australia will be here. Will the one in Sept. ( in Door county) be a beginner or intermediate workshop? Please keep us posted. Thanks for the blog. k
Oh Kay, it’s too bad you can’t join us for the equine photo encaustic workshop…..it’s going to be fabulous and is really my only workshop that will include beginners and intermediates.
When are you in the cities again? I’d love to get together and chat. Send me an email.
Hi Clare;
I am in your upcoming Basalt class. My interest is in equine and has been forever but have not found the medium of oils enough.
Probably because I am not good enough to leave it alone.
Do you have a equine class coming on your future cshedule?
Joni Keefe
Hi Joni, I’m excited to have another horse lover who wants to learn photo encaustic. I have an Equine Photo Encaustic Workshop coming up in August where we’ll be spending 6 days at Eaton’s Ranch in Wyoming photographing and working on encaustics. The details are here: https://photoencaustic.comclone2/photo-encaustic-equine-workshop/. We can talk about it further next weekend.