By the Light of the Moon

I'm having a lot of fun with encaustic painting.

I'm not doing encaustic painting in the traditional sense as described on wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encaustic_painting but I call it encaustic because that sounds so much more artistic to me than "Yep. I melted crayons with an pink embosser that I bought at Hobby Lobby." (Disclaimer: pink was the only color they had the day I was at Hobby Lobby to buy the embosser.)

For this painting I started with an art board that had been painted black years ago. I added more black, purple and blue to the background to give it some depth and to make it a little moreinteresting in the light. You can't see anything but black form this photo.

The tree trunks and branches and the ground were all painted with acrylic paint. I had a little white moon at first but then decided it needed a big moon. The moon is white and yellow and was painted with thick acrylic paint so it has a lot of texture.

The leaves for the tree were the fun part. I chose several shades of yellow, orange and red and melted them with the embosser. The fun part is watching the melted wax swirl together and form interesting shapes and color combinations. The artist has a little control over where and how much wax to put in a particular spot, but a lot of the process is chance. It is guided chance, but chance none the less.

I'll have this painting in Hilldale's Art for Missions Silent Auction at the end of March.