99 shades of blue

and green, and yellow, and red

provincial

I wish I’d taken photographs of this little painting’s transformations along the way…  It started out completely different from this one and has probably morphed at least 5 times since I started it (which was only a few days ago).  I simply wasn’t happy with it.  And instead of grabbing a fresh, new panel to start a new painting on, I decided to give it one more try.

The great thing about working in encaustics is that if you’re not happy with the outcome of a painting –  you can very easily change it.  You don’t have to bother with removing the old paint – you can simply paint over the existing painting.  No need to wait til its dry (it dries instantly), no need to use chemicals or solvents, no scraping, no tools needed at all – just start painting.

The beauty of it lies in the layers.  Encaustic paintings have a history (even if its a really short history!).  Every mark that is made is part of the story.

I’ve watched videos where artists remove all of the wax (layers and layers of wax) and start over, but I like the idea of working with something already there to see where it will go from that point.  And you never know what just might peek through to give it that needed extra ‘something’.

In a way, its like the painting is painting itself – writing it’s own story.  The artist is just the narrator.

And I kind of like it that way.

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