Tissue Torment

Trying out a new idea, from seeing it demonstrated with another artist doing an encaustic segment. Tissue paper collage encaustics, and hers (of course) turned out beautifully. Ah, I said, I have to give that a try.

First off, making copies on tissue took me a long time to figure out. She used a bottom feeding ink jet printer and mine fed from the top. Gravity was my enemy and it seemed that no matter how much cellophane tape I used, the tissue came out wrinkled, when it would go through at all. Couldn't use my laser printer, because it would melt the tape and ruin the printer. Hmmmm, why to do? Then I was pointed to a video where another person was working on a different project and she used double face tape through her laser print and presto - it worked! Doing projects requires me to spend double the amount of time, because I have to lie down after being up for a certain period of time, so that means two days had gone by at this point.

Here are some tissue copies; with the fan running (a must when you are doing encaustics because of fumes) they never wanted to stay put. They quickly flew off if I forgot to put something on top of them.

My substrate is a 7 x 9 300lb pressed watercolor paper, with a 5 x 7 center marked out with painter's tape. Actually this was the easiest part of the whole process.

In her video segment, the artist encouraged us to write words or scribble something on the base layer. I wished I'd never done it. It looks stupid. I won't next time, or else I will use a layer of vintage script. In this picture, there are a few layers of wax.

This is where everything is now. I tried using some oil pastel crayons to blend over the writing, with more layers of wax. Also, one of my tissue images has a darker background than the other and it shows, instead of seamlessly blending together out of sight with the layers of wax. I can still see the word. Sooooo, this may be just a test piece, but I am swallowing my pride so that you can see - hey- mistakes are made by everyone, it's how we learn! I promise to finish and remove the tape so that you can see what it looks like, hopefully not quite so messy!