I've taken a bit of a detour from painting this week for two reasons; first, I was painting like crap. It happens. You're going along in the flow all groovy and chill and, BAM, all of a sudden it turns to garbage and no amount of pushing, cajoling or begging will make the figures behave; you just have to wait and listen to what they want to be. Best to step away for a bit and come back with fresh eyes and attitude. Secondly, I've been taking an on-line encaustics class and am all kinds of infatuated, so it was a great way to spend studio time while letting the painting incubate for a bit.
I originally created these two images as digital collages, using my iPad and Procreate to build many layers of figure, texture and pattern, and there they lived, in the cloud, with no physical manifestation. Not satisfying to me. So I prepared a couple of 10x10 birch cradled panels, printed the images on rice paper, which disappears in the wax except for the inked areas, and built them into collages with encaustic medium, oil paint sticks and pan pastels. I love the mysterious, dreamlike look they've taken on and that now I can touch them and look at them without a screen involved.