Video: Protective Coatings for Encaustics

It's important to use a protective coating on encaustic wax paintings. Learn why in this segment; learn this and more in this free online art lesson about encaustic wax painting and its uses taught by expert John Vanderbrooke.

Video Transcript

Because your finished piece of work with this method is a very thin coat of wax, you could actually take your fingernail and scratch into the wax. In fact, there are some parts in painting that you actually use scratch techniques to work with the wax but if you don't want this painting to be ruined, you're going to have to protect it in some way. And so, there's a lot of different ways you could coat that. You'll always want to polish it first because that will put a shine on the wax to begin with and I like to use an old piece of nylon, a nylon stocking. You can use Kleenex but sometimes if you're doing it a little too hard, it'll scratch the wax. But here, you can polish the surface and it'll begin to shine through polishing and then put a coating on top of that to keep the shine look intact. And there is a product that we use for a wax sealer that I get from the Netherlands and that's one thing you could use. I've also used a lacquer, an artist lacquer and I have got a product like a glaze product in craft stores I've used, and there's even liquid floor polish; it works great as a covering to protect the surface. But that's an important step if you don't want to have your small paintings scratched.

Protective Coatings for Encaustics

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