Ingredients
Beeswax, encaustic medium pigmented or clear, a heated palette, natural bristle brushes or anything that will get the paint on, a rigid panel, a way to fuse, ideas or objects to layer, scraping and incising tools, oil sticks or oil paint.

Melt
Melt all on palette; can be a specially designed palette, pancake griddle, pans over a camp burner. The higher the heat of the palette the smoother the medium goes on, For more texture lower the temperature of the palette. Keep the temperature between (185-225 F). Always have proper ventilation.

Paint
Paint, no hesitating allowed – encaustic is either hard or soft so don’t put molten wax on your brush and wonder what you’re going to do. It will harden very quickly. Soften by heating again. I celebrate the spontaneity of this medium.

Fuse
Each layer must be fused to the layer below it. Fuse with heat (a heat gun, iron, 200 watt light bulb, propane torch, the sun) directed at your piece. The challenge of this medium is in the process of understanding the application and the fusing. In some ways you have control but there is a certain amount of control that you cannot have. Once the heat is applied it may do the unexpected. Learning to work with what is given in that moment is one of the gifts of this medium.

Layer – Build Up & Scrap Down
Keep layering- all the mistakes you think have been made – keep layering – those mistakes may surprise you later when you see that they weren’t mistakes but steps along the way. . Build up with the medium and then scrap down to what was there before. Use razors, palette knives, pointed tools, clay trimmers, anything that will get you through the layers and further down into the painting. This is one of the interesting working properties of encaustic. Paint, fuse, layer, build up, scrap, layer, paint, fuse, build up and on until complete.

Incise & Mixed Media
As you build up the painting with the wax incise lines and make marks to which you can add encaustic in a technique known as intarsia. Scrap what hasn’t found it’s way into the lines and creat images. Add collaged pieces, embed found objects, photo transfers, I keep experimenting.

Add Oil Paint
Oil and wax are compatible in proper proportions. To an oil painting a scrim of wax can be applied or to an encaustic painting smaller amounts of oil. The oils create beautiful glazes and add much to the already luminous quality of the wax.