Video: Tools for Encaustic Wax Painting

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Supplies you will need for encaustic wax painting including iron, blow dryer and other useful items; learn this and more in this free online art lesson about encaustic wax painting and its uses taught by expert John Vanderbrooke.

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Video Transcript

The hot tools that I mentioned that you need to use this European style method of encaustic painting would start with--the main tool would be an iron, like this travel iron size. It is designed for encaustic painting. You could try to find a small iron at home to try this, but you wouldn't want a steam iron that has holes in the surface and you wouldn't want a Teflon coated iron. And the other tool would be a stylus, which has a bunch of different points that can be put in the front, all operating at a low temperature around 200 degrees. So don't think that this is like a wood burning tool, that would be much too hot to work with with wax and actually could cause the wax to catch on fire. The thing about this travel iron is that it can be reassembled into a hot plate, so you can work with hot paper instead of using it as an iron. And then, another thing that you're going to need to look at is the different types of waxes that you're going to use. These particular waxes come in three different sets of colors and all of these comes from the Netherlands. And if you'll notice, these are quite small sizes of these blocks. A traditional encaustic painter needs huge blocks of wax put in pots and melt and therefore, it's much more expensive than this process. When you get all through painting, you're going to want to protect your painting with a sealer of some kind and this is one of the many kinds of sealers you could use. Another tool that I use is a hot air gun to blow the wax around. Now this is a real commercial model that I got from Sears, but I like it because I can dial the temperature in exactly the way I want it and also control the air flow. When I started, I had to use a hair dryer which was okay, but it's a lot of air and not enough heat, and then there's a thing called an "embossing gun" that scrapbookers use and again, that's too much heat and not enough air; you can work two together but that gets to be a little cumbersome, so at some point, you might invest in a heavier duty tool like this. And that pretty much covers the tools.

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Tools for Encaustic Wax Painting

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