Linda Womack, What Voices Remain, Encaustic & mixed mediums, 2010
In mid December I received a call for art for Exploring the Triptych: Wax in Three Parts, a show hosted by the International Encaustic Artists. I was interested in entering but the timing was tough so I worked on it a little at a time through the holidays and was finally able to get a good handle on it this week. I’m thrilled to say that it’s finally done, but not without a little help from my friends. I’ll explain.
A few months ago I did an encaustic demo in Eugene and met up with Berni Ward, the co-founder of PanPastels. I had been using these wonderfully soft pastels in my work and classes for almost a year but at the demo Berni showed me some really nice applicators to use with them, along with a bunch of new colors to try out. Well they sure came in handy yesterday while I was finishing up my triptych!
I often rub powdered graphite onto the surface of my wax to darken areas but anyone who has worked with it know that it can get easily away from you and that’s just what happened, naturally when I was just about done. So I got out my ebony PanPastel pot and went to work fixing the damage instead of scraping and repainting the area. It came out even more beautiful than I had hoped. With that success I started experimenting with more of my new colors and the result is a much richer colored painting than I would have had without them. Thanks Berni!
How I Use PanPastels with Wax
For those of you who have never used PanPastels with wax, I encourage you to try it. You just rub the color onto the surface of firm wax with either your finger or one of the foam applicators. They are so soft and powdery I think you could even use a brush. If you need to remove some an alcohol wipe usually does the trick. They are very easy to work with. I’m even experimenting now with a painting using nothing but encaustic medium and PanPastels for color. They have some great videos showing how to use them on paper, and most of it relates directly to how you can apply them to wax. OK, enough web time, now go paint!
8 comments
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January 20, 2010 at 5:15 pm
Elaine in OR
Wow Linda, they are simply beautiful. I wish that I could afford to buy some of the pan pastels but there is just no money for them. I can’t wait to see more of your artwork.
Elaine in OR
January 20, 2010 at 11:41 pm
gl.
looks great, linda!
January 21, 2010 at 5:15 pm
Margaret Berry
I love hearing how you made this recent work and am going to order some PanPastels just on your recommendation. Thanks!
March 2, 2010 at 11:05 pm
embracingencaustic
Thanks for all of the comments! I’m glad you’ll get to try them, Margaret. Thea, I can always bring some with me when I visit…
January 22, 2010 at 8:49 am
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January 22, 2010 at 10:07 pm
Paula S In New Mexico
Oh how I have enjoyed my pan pastels. My husband convinced me to purchase a set several months ago. I’ve been using them with a variety of mediums on acrylic, generally in my art journals. Wonderful.
January 24, 2010 at 5:10 pm
encausticcanada
I was able to buy a set of PanPastels when I I was in Portland, taking a workshop with Linda last year and really love them!
I’ve used them here in my classes and everyone is very careful just to use a little bit, because I’m the only one does have them…;-)
Nice to know that there are new colours and I will try to order them for Canada.
Thea
July 13, 2011 at 6:21 pm
Kathy Tobacco
I wish that someone would address using regular soft pastels (versus the pan pastels) with encaustic paint. I have just invested a small fortune setting up in encaustics and I really want to use what I already have if it is possible. I have looked all over the internet and have found almost nothing about using soft pastels with encaustic paint. I experimented myself and I thought the results were beautiful. I did an underpainting and pretty much covered the whole thing in encaustic paint. But the pigments on the soft pastels are so strong (I used high quality pastels) that they colors came through the encaustic paint. I used an Ampersand Encausticbord which has a nice tooth so the pastels really stuck to the board. Later when I would scrape off wax the pastel paint stayed down on the support and didn’t leave me with the white board. I didn’t have much luck apply the soft pastel to the wax though.