True to her mixed media passion, Tina Walker envisions many mediums to be used with these Ireland & Scotland-inspired stencils; paint, sprays, paste, and ink. You'll see art journal pages and encaustic painting in the artworks below:
The Stone Face Stencil was inspired by a beautiful stone fireplace in Kylemore Abbey, located in Connemara, County Galway, Ireland. Tina writes, "As I looked at the stone structure, I wondered what trials the face has witnessed, silently observing, never judging."
The Cathedral Arch Stencil was inspired by St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin, Ireland. Tina is always drawn towards architectural shapes and designs, especially when they have a long, historical reference.
The Gaol Stairs Stencil is a 2nd from the series inspired by the Kilmainham Gaol, a former 19th Century prison in Dublin, Ireland. The stories of the men, women, and children who walked these steps are a pathway to the past.
You can discover more about Tina's process on her A Dog's Life Blog. Tina demos with distress oxide inks:
Shari Replogle here! Super excited to share a
variety of techniques that use stencils in encaustic painting!
I love adding marks, lines, and patterns especially
with StencilGirl® stencils because they are easy to
clean and hold up nicely with heavy use and heat of the hot encaustic wax.
If you have never painted with
encaustic before, it is purified beeswax mixed with damar resin which is used to
harden the wax over time. Any pigments can be added except for
acrylic based products because of their plasticity.
These are the stencils from StencilGirl® that I used in
today's project: Soulful Scribbles
There are a variety of ways
to create with stencils on the encaustic surface. To begin I paint 3 layers of
white encaustic paint onto hard boards primed with encaustic gesso. You can
also use primed encaustic boards by Ampersand.
In encaustic painting every layer
of wax and pigment that you add must be “fused” (bonded by
heat) to the layer below to form
an archival bond. The best way to begin when you are adding stencils is to fuse
those first layers of wax very flat so that you can get all those great marks
onto an even surface.
The pigments I am using today are
Panpastels and R and F pigment sticks:
I like to build up rich layers of
patterns, marks, and colors on the encaustic surface so that you can peer back
through the layered history of a piece and view bits and pieces that reveal
themselves in all of the previous layers. The dreamy translucency of the
beeswax allows this to be possible.
Great textures can also be added
with stencils and encaustic paint!
In the following video, I show
multiple ways that you can incorporate and apply StencilGirl® stencils in
super fun ways to your encaustic painting process. Never tried encaustic? Come
on in! It’s highly addicting!
Shari Replogle’s Encausticology studios are in Downtown Cincinnati.
