On Tuesday, I gave each of my twelve Studio in Art students a valentine.  I prepped 3″ x 5″ canvas panels with a few layers of beeswax. I carved in a heart stencil.  I thought this would be a quick and fun way to introduce them to encaustic painting.

I took an encaustic course (graduate level) at Syracuse University in 2012 with free credits I’d earned for hosting a student teacher.  Davana Robedee was my instructor.  I love incorporating this relatively new-to-me media in the art classroom.

Students melted oil pastels on pancake griddles (all the windows in the room were open and the fans were on high) and went to town tackling their tiny canvases.  The thing about wax is that when warm, it produces a luscious liquid color on the brush – but as soon as you remove it from the heat source, it solidifies, so…that brush stroke needs to be a quick thinking confident one – needs to count!  They really loved the process.  We decided to add a second day of it, which gave them time to process the process and make better decisions once they got the hang of it.

I painted 11″ x 14″ canvas panels with black acrylic paint for each of them and glued wooden plaques to the centers.  Students carved into their encaustic paintings with clay tools to enhance the texture then added mixed media items to it and/or to the black frame.  We brought the encaustics in for the landings with Elmer’s glue.

I am in love with the decisions they made and the fact that in three classes they all created these wonderful emotionally-charged finished products.   So beautiful.  I love heart energy! <3