Let it Be Encaustic Process

My buddy Randy curates some awesome shows around town. This time it was "Album of the Year," which opened Friday at Studio Le Beau in Tremont (an adorable suburb of Cleveland, Ohio). For this show, we all created 12x12 tributes of our favorite album covers. We of the Rust Belt Monster Collective also used this for our Week 18 challenge topic.

Awesome Poster by Ms. Ashley Ribblet

  I chose to illustrate the Beatles' "Let it Be". 

To create my album cover, I first rendered the image in charcoal on Arches Hot Press 300gsm Watercolor Paper (right now, this is the only paper I use on for charcoal works).

The paper is attached to a drawing using drafting tape. I don't like this tape as much as my usual artist tape (which the store was out of) for 2 reasons: 1) It is lighter and not as sticky, which makes maintaining clean lines more difficult and 2) it is yellow instead of white, which makes you view the color of your work differently.

I spray fixed the drawing, cut it out of the sheet of paper with an x-acto knife, and grabbed a watercolor-paper covered 12x12 hardboard panel I had prepped earlier. This panel had to have an absorbent sheet of paper attached to it since it had come pre-gessoed and encaustic wax does not stick to acrylic gesso.

I then heated up some encastic medium (beeswax mixed with damar resin) on the ole' George Foreman and poured a layer of wax on to the panel. My assistant (boyfriend) and I then used a heat gun to keep the wax liquid long enough to let it soak through the drawing. This basically glues the paper to the wood and "fuses" the wax, making it stronger, smoother, and harder. It also is the most difficult part since the wax cools very quickly. Definitely a 2 person job.

George Foreman commandeered from the Boyfriend... Sorry Ron

Here is the drawing covered in Wax. I love all the cool textures we got! Notice how I accidentally cut it a little too small for the panel... whoops...

Waxy!

And then I painted over the wax in oils! Hmm... I bet you want to see that part. Head over to the Rust Belt Monster Collective site to check it out!

Here is a preview:

Pot Preview

Kiln Wizard Jeff sent these photos today of a few of my new pieces. Can't wait to see them in person! Although those brown bowls were definitely supposed to be greenish...

Pottery show THIS Friday!!

Painting Pots

I started creating pottery as an escape from working digitally every day and quickly fell in love with the feel of it. I am a sloppy pottery....but for me the thrill of playing with mud is more important than the end result. My fingers itch to get tactile again after hours of drawing imaginary lines.

My favorite part is the decorating. However, getting to that stage often takes a while, especially after a long break like this one. Sometimes it takes up until then for my obsessive nature to take over and I get hooked on pottery yet again...

Here are a few pieces I am working on now for the upcoming Sacred Vessels show at Bayarts (Opening May 11th, 7 to 9). I will also have some charcoal drawings in the show!

Large Woven Rim Platter

Small Textured Platters. These have the same floral motif as the bowls below but are going to be bright turquoise!

 

Time is Sacred Bowl Set.

Click here for Show information.

Goings On This Week

Suddenly May is here and my life got very busy again!

Here is where you can see me this week:

Ingenuity Festival's Ingenuity’s Bal Ingenieux • Friday May 4th, 6pm to 1am
We of the Rust Belt Monster Collective will draw a live comic strip over the course of this 7 hour event. This is not to be missed!

Artwork by RMBC's own Craig Worrell

Free Comic Book Day at Carol and John's Comics! • Saturday May 5th, 12am to 2am and 10am to 7pm. This event is a blast! The RMBC and many other local artists all submitted their own versions of Marvel comic book covers. Here is mine:

 See you out on the town!