How I Came to Love that Three Letter Word

Lilies for Diego 16 x 16 cold wax and oil Available here

W-A-X.  Specifically beeswax.  I’ve experienced the world of hot wax (encaustic) painting and am now diving into cold wax. I now routinely mix cold wax with my oil paints for traditional painting on panels.  Hot or cold, wax is a blast! 

Fireworks Encaustic. 6 x 6 Available here

 

I have a preference for working with cold over hot.  It’s 100 degrees outdoors! Working with cold materials in summer is preferable to working with hot materials.  Setting up with cold wax is also quite simple compared to encaustic. Painting with encaustic materials requires hot plates, electric blowers, dishes of hot pigments, gloves, and a vent system. Cold wax merely requires a tub of prepared beeswax paste and a palette knife for mixing it with your tube pigments.

In either case, beeswax imparts wonderful qualities to the paint. The translucent quality it lends to the pigment is immediately apparent.  It changes the consistency of the paint so that the artist can manipulate the paint to achieve different textures and edges. And the cold wax mixture, non-toxic, sets up faster than oil alone. According to an article at the web page for Cold Wax Painting, there’s no need to worry about the traditional oil painting rule of “fat over lean” (for non-oil painters all that means is how much oil your paint has in it—for drying and cracking reasons, the oilier paint goes on top of paint that is less oily or thinned paint.)  When the paint is mixed with cold wax medium the wax equalizes the ratios of paint and oil that necessitate this rule. Finally, the wax gives a soft matte finish to the painting, but one which may be buffed to a low sheen.

Test tiles for painting with cold wax and oil.  See below for explanation

The medium provides great freedom of expression.  There are frontiers to explore:  new objects to use as tools for mark-making, new ways to create textures, and new mixed media techniques (collage) to bring more excitement and interest to my work. 

I made a few test tiles and here are some of my early test explorations above: left: palette knife and embedded tissue collage; top center: stencil first then sgraffito marks into wet paint; top right: sgraffito only; bottom center: sgraffito very pronounced; far right bottom: two layers of stencil

Think “Madame Tussaud”, anything’s possible!

And that’s the buzz about beeswax. Thank you little worker honey bees!

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Thank you for reading. If you enjoy my essays, please share with your family and friends.  I’d like to hear from YOU!  Please leave comments and questions. 

My paintings are available at my studio in Cary, NC, online at Sheffield Art Studio and at my Daily Paintworks Gallery (link above too!) 

 

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Fine Art America (FAA)

Layers of Light

It’s hot, it’s cold, it’s elusive, and it changes everything.

I was walking mid-afternoon in my neighborhood enjoying the autumn colors, the geese overhead and far off dogs barking.  The long shadows reminded me of shorter days and longer nights, the loss of light.  Humans have an instinctive love of light, and if I can’t have as much in the next few months, I’ve found ways to create it in my studio.



First Encaustic 3 3/4 x 3 3/4 wax on tile

For many years I’ve wanted to learn the ancient art of encaustic painting, the application of hot pigmented wax in layers to a surface.  I got my chance under the direction of Dianne Rodwell in her Encaustic Kitchen at her Artspace Studio in Raleigh. I learned many techniques for achieving special effects. Because beeswax is translucent, wonderful depth is achieved as light seeps through the layers diffusing the light and working its magic on the layers of color.  This ancient art is a feast for the eye as well as a temptation for the hand.  You want to sneak a guilty stroke of its surface.




 



Spring Glow #2 started with transparent oils.  oil 8 x 8



Not long after Diane’s class, I dove into a three day, fun packed (and calorie-packed-yum, thanks to Lynda Chambers) discovery of transparent colors with Dreama Tolle Perry.  The jewel like transparent colors she recommends allow light to flow through and around the painting. Opaque paints are used carefully in the final layers of the painting and in higher, lighter values to create a still heightened sense of light.  I have rearranged my painting palette to separate transparent colors from opaque colors to heighten my awareness during the painting process.Here are two interpretations of the same scene, one below painted with no mind for using transparent oil colors in the first layer, and the one to the left started with transparent oils in the first layer.

 

Spring Glow oil 10 x 8 SOLD





Mike Rooney CRAZY color-red block on yellow block

"What's in the light?  What’s in the shadow?” Mike Rooney kept asking.  In the Cape Cod Under-painting method (CCU), you use one set of colors to paint what is in light, one set to paint what is shadow, always being aware more of correct value, than of correct local “real” color (what he calls “home” color).  After a morning reminding us of how a color is one value in light becomes a different value in shadow, he introduced the application of “crazy color”.  He set up colored blocks set up on colored paper under a spotlight.  Our task was to paint a picture of the block, painting the sides hit by the spotlight using only red, yellow, orange or pink; the sides in shadow could only be painted from the colors green, blue, purple, or alizarin red.  Mind you, this might be a RED block!  So the shadow side of a red block might have to be purple or blue, not a dark red or dark orange.  Or if it were a yellow block, the shadow side might have to be green.   C- R-A-Z-Y color! 

It’s in the next layer where the artist corrects the color, without obliterating all of the under layer, bringing the color closer to “real” color. The eye grabs crazy color, mixes the layers, and you see united color full of rich light or shadow.







Light diffused through wax, transparent colors, eye-mixing crazy color defining light and shadow.  I’ll be experimenting with all these new ways of bringing light into my creative work. Goals set!

How will YOU capture the light during the winter months? I'd like to hear from YOU! Please leave comments and questions.

My paintings are available at Cary Gallery of Artists 200 S. Academy St. in downtown Cary Ashworth Village. 919-462-2035 Mon-Sat 11 am - 5:30 pm.

 . . .And by contacting me at the following links:

 www.sheffieldartstudio.com 

LIKE me on
www.facebook.com/sarahsheffieldartstudio

Things They Are A-Changin'

Things are bubbling and brewing and stirring!  It’s not Halloween.  I feel good changes coming on.  Was it just a few posts ago that I wrote about the Road Renewed?  Maybe after staging three solo shows recently (remind me to space them out!), I’m excited about stirring things up in my work.  As the daughter of two teachers, it’s in my blood to do that by learning.  In the next few weeks and months I plan to spend time in workshops learning encaustic (painting with hot wax) from Dianne T. Rodwell, discovering colorful transparent oil paints from Dreama Tolle Perry, and understanding the Cape Cod school method of underpainting from Mike Rooney. What a lineup! I will practice my watercolor techniques and sketch.  I will experiment and paint without deadlines.  Hallelujah!  We’ll see what bubbles to the surface.  It’s a journey!

We just returned from a quick trip to the Miami area and visited galleries and street art fairs. It’s always fun to see the diversity of styles and trends that we might not see in our local galleries.  We saw lots of hot colors and cool metallic, abstracts and mixed media.

I’d like to leave you with what I’m calling the “People’s Pick” –those paintings which received the most attention at my recent Cary Gallery of Artists “Luminous Landscapes and More Sparkle (paintings on copper).” One thing I enjoy about exhibit receptions is listening and watching the reactions to my work. I hope you enjoy this mini exhibit.

Calm in the Basin 12 x 12 framed to 17 x 17 oil

Shimmering Stones 10 x 8 oil

 
 
 
 




















Bunting and 'Brella 12 x 12 framed to 17 x 17 oil



Beach Grass 18 x 24 oil

What is YOUR journey?  I’d like to hear from YOU!  Please leave comments and questions.

 

Our next travels?   Taos NM in the spring and we hope Key West in the fall.

 

Have palette.  Will travel

In Cary, my paintings are available at Cary Gallery of Artists 200 S. Academy St. in downtown Cary Ashworth Village. 919-462-2035 Mon-Sat 11 am - 5:30 pm. 

On the coast, my works are available at Figments Gallery, 1319 Military Cutoff, Landfall Shopping Center, Wilmington, NC 28405 910-509-4289

www.sheffieldartstudio.com

www.facebook.com/sarahsheffieldartstudio