Progression from negative to encaustic

I thought I'd post a 3-picture progression of how I progressed from a negative to a finished encaustic piece.

First, I scanned the 35mm black and white negative and made some adjustments in Lightroom.

I then printed the picture on lightweight paper (in this case, plain old copy paper) so that it would adhere more easily to the board.

I then did a little doodling and hand-coloring to change things up a bit. I used colored pencils, Pitt India ink pens and a Sharpie white poster paint marker.

Finally, I coated the picture with wax medium and fused it to a board that had also been coated with  medium. I then added oil paint, incised marks, some oil pastel, and metallic paint pigment that was mixed with water.

All I need to add now are a couple of eye-screws and wire to the back for hanging. I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out.

Mixed media fun

So, I went to the workshop I talked about last night. Initially, I was nervous since clearly I had misunderstood the instruction about collage (I was supposed to bring collage materials, not a collage). However, it turned out all right. Teesha had plenty of collage materials for us to work with and I was forced to be a bit more creative in terms of creating a journal around fish.

We first prepped our books by painting watercolor paper with acrylic paints. Next, we bound them into a small journal. After that it was collaging time - first the borders of some of the pages (there wasn't enough time to do the entire book). Next, we worked on our content for the pages - the collages of our various beasts. Then came time for pen work, which meant we added color and marks to the collage primarily with pens. Finally, we got to the cover and how to do the collage and paint it.

Mine's nowhere near finished but I finished one two-page spread. I think it turned out pretty nice:

I guess I was still thinking about Moby Dick and that eye of his, though my whale isn't white. All in all, it was a lot of fun and really freeing to just start making marks without worrying too much about how it turned out. That's one of the joys of the "beginner's mind" - fearlessness and pleasure at just having created something you didn't know you could.

Workshop tomorrow

A very short post this evening. I'm attending a workshop held by Teesha Moore all day tomorrow. It's a mixed-media workshop so I'm hoping that I'll get some additional ideas for using my photos in different ways. I'm a little nervous since I had to create a collage to bring with me and I have almost zero experience in collage making. I chose a theme of fish since I seem to be big on the aquarium world these days. Hopefully, I'll have something interesting to show at the end of tomorrow.

Oh, and as an addendum to the last post about hands...my friend, Carla sent me this link to a very creepy iPhone cover. Can you say, "Creeeeepy?"