Experimenting all day today...

...housework needs doing, pots need washing, paperwork needs filling in and sent off, emails need answering, laundry needs doing, the waste bins need emptying...they are overflowing over the floor...hang on, you don't realise how much waste I get from this encaustic art...the waste paper bins were emptied on Thursday, it is only Sunday today!

I need newspaper protecting my work surface, and replacing constantly. I also need a fresh piece of white paper under each new piece of card (in this case, I am using photo paper instead of the 'proper' encaustic card...much much cheaper and works just as well in my opinion) I am using to do the encaustic painting on. I have found that when I change colours on the card, for example if I have done blue first, and after I have cleaned the iron with several pieces of kitchen paper (which also end up in the wastepaper basket), I need to change the piece of white paper under the card otherwise the iron, which now has pink on it, picks up unwanted blue from the waste paper under the card. So as you can see the waste paper mounts up.

However, I have just realised, that maybe I can utilise the white (waste) paper under the card I am doing the encaustic painting on. I was using paper with photocopies on that I did not want any more. Then I ran out of that. So the only thing I could use in an emergency this weekend was my photocopier paper. But then I saw some interesting effects on the photocopier paper when I took the encaustic painting off it. So I swished the iron on it a bit, and hey presto, a new painting. I can cut it down to the interesting bits. However, this is only cheap photocopy paper, so now I want some better quality photocopy paper for the "waste" paper under the card I am actually doing the encaustic painting on. But, this hinges on the better quality photocopy paper giving the same/similar effects I am getting now with the cheap one. In any case the cheap paper still works. So, by accident I discovered how to make more paintings...

Loads ideas today, more than I can physically do. I am getting better at using the tip of the (household steam) iron to do fine branches on the trees. But the problem is, when I have a break, even to make a cuppa, I cannot get back into it for an hour or more...I just cannot manipulate the melted wax on the tip of the iron to do a fine line...it comes off in a big round blob exactly where I cannot do anything with it...but I do manage to incorporate this wax blob. Then suddenly an hour or more after I started again, I can do exquisitely fines tree branches with the tip of my iron...and I do not want to stop!!!

Here are four of my painting offerings from today for my challenge to myself of a pic a day every day in 2017. The overriding theme today is trees!

Right...back to play again...