How to Begin a Encaustic Wax Painting

Video Transcript

"Okay, let's get started and start doing some painting. First thing you're going to do is take some wax and melt it on your iron like that. Now, don't iron like you're ironing clothes, do a real, soft touch. Put the iron onto the card, but just let it glide over the surface and let the wax pull off the card like this and see if you can't cover the whole card with wax to start with. This is the way I get everybody to start learning because once you have the card totally covered with wax, here's where you're going to want to start playing to see all the different patterns that you can create with the iron. The thing that's happening is as the iron, when it touches the wax melts the wax and when you move the iron, a vacuum is created. And then that vacuum sucks in the wax behind it and it creates a pattern, so what you want to do is to begin to play with the different patterns that happen. For instance, let's say that we just lay the iron down like this, and pick it straight up. Now, notice that pattern that's created there. This becomes very interesting because all these little patterns can later on be incorporated in different parts of a realistic painting or, of course, it can be used as an abstract pattern as well. If you're moving the iron around in little patterns all the way around the picture like this, you can create what they call "mandala" pictures like that, or patterns that are repeated over and over again, basically. Now, you can also take the iron and begin to shuffle it, just slide it like this and create wonderful little fan-shaped patterns, which can also be wonderfully used for skies. They make a wonderful sky effect. And what I want you to think about doing is seeing how many different patterns you can make by lifting the iron up like that, using the edge of the iron to make things like grasses when you're doing this. And it's just a matter of playing like a child, and you can literally spend hours making little abstract patterns like this and be totally engrossed in this kind of work because I've watched people do this and they just get enthralled, and this works for somebody who says, "I'm totally not an artist. I don't have an artistic bone in my body." They start doing this and they realize, "Oh my gosh! I am an artist.""