Post 45: Can't Believe how Time Flies, and how little I have done since my last post...

   For better or worse, the last few months seem to have been spent painting Banners and Signs and Protesting with "The Poor People Campaign".
   I have done some work on this EncausticProject, but not as much as I wish I had.
   I have finished all the collage work on the Red Top Triptych, and covered the panels in clear wax. I still have problems with the milkiness of the coat of wax in the darkest areas. Since there had been problems with damaging the Photograpic Images while scraping the wax down, I am trying to just melt it with a heat gun and leave it alone:

      I  ordered a pound of bleached wax, and will try mixing some strained damar resin into it to see if it might be more transparent than the premixed Encaustic Medium.
     Also, it seems that cooling the hot panel quickly in the refrigerator might help. It also allows me to get a higher shine, which translate ito more contrast and brighter colors. I bought a small fridge on sale at Lowes into which I can fit an 18" x 21" panel without the frame. I will from now on work on the plain plywood panels, and mount them later when finished.
     But the best way to avoid the milkiness is to avoid the buildup caused by the thickness of the printing paper. After some research, I found a very light weight 32lbs Premium Matte paper made by Red River, and will be using it from now on. The finish is very similar to the Epson Ultra Premium Professionnal Matte Paper.

Post 44: Still Moving Along, Slowly

Every day seems to bring something to do besides working on the tryptich, and it has not moved along enough.
Still, I printed all the Photographic parts for the last panel, as well as an additional piece of tape for panel 2

and am now gluing them in place, all the while looking at the first two more advanced panels:

   I printed the shadows of the electric twisted wires and the bee, but will glue them. Instead, I willuse the cutouts to trace and render them in pencil, which I find more realistic. 

Post 43: Moving along...

    On top, the middle panel with the top is well advanced, everything is glued on, and some of the shading is done. The Trompe l'Oeil is begining to work pretty well. 

    The left panel just has the cutout images laid on top, and I am contemplating the trompe l'oeil options, and what to add to enhance the effect.

    The  right panel background is done, but I still have to print the images at the proper scale, and I am still testing some ideas.

Post 42: Starting to assemble things and working on backgrounds

   I started to lay the cutout images on the panels to make sure they would work and were sized properly. I am quite pleased with the way the first panel looks, and even without a finished background, I can tell the second one will look good too:

   The "Spit Textured"yellowish background and red lines are done on the third panel, and I am ready to do the background Celestial Chart drawings using White Carbon Paper and Graphite transfer Paper:

    I was mentioning the "Spit Texturing Technique " to a friend the other day, and got the wonderful suggestion that it was a way to place my DNA forever into the paintings. I love that idea. There is something to be done with that "Spit DNA" Concept. It would be easy enough to include the DNA of the buyer too, like a mark of ownership, sort of a Secret EX LIBRIS...

    Just for fun, I give you a peak at the mess on my huge 49"W x 14 ft L Studio Work Table, with my 55" Computor Monitor in the back. There is not a square foot of empty space. I still have to photograph all the new objects and file them in my Image Bank. 

   I clamped the other pieces, finished and in progress to the edge of the table so I can look at them as I am working on smaller pieces :

Post 41: Printing and Cutting Out the Elements of the Photo Collage

    It actually took me a good couple of days to measure and size the different elements of the collage. A few are single images, but most include several overlapping images, and have to be lined up and sized precisely.
     All the parts for the first two panels actually fit on a single 13"x19" sheet of matte paper. I like to add a few extra things to fill blank spaces, like extra insects, marbles, buttons, etc...

      It is a tight fit, and looks like a big jumble of things...

     Then comes the rather tedious, but somewhat zen like job of precisely cutting out all the pieces of the puzzle. The legs of insect are so small that I usually reenforce them with some white glue to keep them from braking, or reattach them if they already broke off. Same with the cords. I use a magnifier lamp for the smallest details.

    Then the white edges of the paper have to be colored with pastels so they blend in.

Post 40: On your marks, GO!

   I will be working on all three panels at the same time so the textures and tones match. It also should go faster.
   I created the light yellowish texture but rubbing in pigments, spitting, rubbing on multi colored light pastel sticks, spitting again, sprinkling watercolors with toothbrushes, sitting again and dabbing, rubbing darker shades of pastels some more lightly, sprinkling a weak Gum Arabic Solution, and finally spraying a finer mist of gum Arabic to fix the colors.

   Instead of using chalk to transfer the white patterns on the black areas and charcoal to transfer black patterns on light areas, I bought some white transfer paper and some graphite black transfer paper. The results are quite nice, and I am wondering whether to leave the lines as they are, or to redraw them with white and black pencils as my original intention was. I will do all three panels and decide later.

Post 39: Ready to Get Going!

       I started to build the three 18"x 18" panels for the first Tryptich with objects in niches:

      The Red Croquet Ball is actually much larger than the Top and the Pool Ball, so I decided to replace with a Red Pool Ball with an ivory dot, so the sizes of the niches would match at 2.75"x2.75"

    I built the niches in the 3 panels, gessoed them, and painted the "blackboard areas" with blackboard paint:

      Looking at the Photoshop mockup, I saw some possible improvements, added red lines to the side panels, moved things a bit, found a name for the brass plates, and for the tags. I also saturated the colors a bit and increased contrast. Here is the current Mockup of the "Red Top Tryptich":

Heavy Heart, Danger...                              Work for the Red, Top...                                 All Red, No Juice...