Experimenting with leaves...

...and the encaustic wax paintings with an iron.

Tried several ways of doing this. Used ferns and all kinds of real leaves. This one isn't the best of encaustic paintings but this leaf pressed on with an iron into the wax gave the effect of a tree once the leaf was removed. I also scraped with a cocktail stick along the leaf veins and the outside 'leaves' of the tree. So, I put this one in for my painting for today.

It was not so easy to do because the iron went beyond the leaf on to the wax already put on the card and it made a bit of a mess of the surrounding wax which I had to fiddle with. But I might figure out a better way in the morning.

I did some other experiments with encaustic wax and mixed media, but it didn't quite work out. But it is getting there. These kind of days could be looked on as frustrating days, but I know tomorrow I will be able to immerse in it more easily and produce something, and today's problems with the encaustic painting will resolve themselves. Anyway, I will be up early again tomorrow to paint. Today was a warm up trying out ideas...tomorrow will be working more on those ideas, and I have high hopes.

I am playing with inks with the encaustic wax, some old 1945's sheet music to glue on to the hard canvas board and then encaustic wax them, and more ideas. So this place is a wee bit of a mess with all these try out ideas. These will be done with the iron and wax.

This is my entry today for my challenge to myself of a pic every day in 2017.

It was bitterly cold most of the day, but late afternoon the sun came out so I went outside and Popeye pounced on me to go into the potting shed for a lie down, and so he sat on top of me. With doing this encaustic painting, and the iron being on, he is locked out of the room for his own safety!