Weekend Wax, "First Rain"

Here's my weekend's attempt at beeswax collage. I always forget how slow beeswax collage is compared to collage where there's paint and mediums flying. So yes, there was a little fight with the new skill set but it was completely worth it and I'm hooked.

 Click read more at the bottom to see the step by step.

So my wax has been collecting dust since Patricia Baldwin Seggebruch left our studios but with a damp paper towel and a little electricity, I was back in business. Outside,  a constant curtain of rain. Inside, a sweater and a stack of Anne Bagby-style deli papers.


Ever since I started the latest Great Clean I'd been staring at the wax materials really wanting to do something. But it was summer and the little heat we had didn't cause me to feel like handling the hot. But then I joined a Yahoo group called Beeswax Collage and that was the final push I needed to actually *do* something.

(1) Here was my idea of how I'd put the beeswax collage together. I hadn't played with beeswax in a long time so I'd clearly forgotten some of Patricia Seggebruch's most important lessons about testing materials so you can be prepared for when they DARKEN a ton. (Oops)




(2) Down goes the first layer of wax. I think I gasped at how quickly it dried. I almost gave up right then and pulled out my matte medium.

(3) Here's the background piece of deli paper half waxed down. The deli paper is in the style of Anne Bagby's second DVD with us. I love how well it combined with the wax. I'd hoped it would work this well and boy did it. (Yay!)

(4) And darken! I almost peeled the brown paper up but decided to go forward.
(5) I love the effect of the stamped tissue paper. This is something I learned from Claudine Hellmuth's beeswax collage. Tissue paper disappears so whatever is on that tissue paper is left. It has the feel of a transfer without all the transfer madness.



(6) Speaking of transparency, the first bird (upper) completely disappeared when I waxed it down. I experimented off to the side with some grid paper underneath the deli paper and it helped keep the bird from completely getting lost into the background. So I pulled up the top bird and layered in the grid (7) paper. (I love how you can peel mistakes up in beeswax collage.)

(8) This is just a close up of the final birds and (9) is the final piece. I used dotted lines on tissue paper to better define the bird silhouette. I waxed down only the tissue paper with the line on it. I made sure not to cover the body of the bird with tissue because it dulled the colors too much.

Thanks for reading!!