Art Process

This slide show illustrates the process I used to create Spring Snow, from watercolor base to layers of encaustic to touches of transparent oils with beeswax on an Ampersand Encausticbord panel.

For the watercolor layer, I created the foreground trees by dragging wet paint with bamboo skewers and toothpicks and then scratched into them with sharp blades. The fields and mountains are broad washes of color applied with hake and chipping brushes.

The next stage involved coating the surface with encaustic medium and then adding only touches of thin gray encaustics to create the stormy atmosphere.

After smoothing the surface, I scratched into it a bit with razor blades before applying touches of oils with beeswax using R&F Paints oil pigment sticks which are a simply luscious blend of pigment, beeswax, and linseed oil.

The result is my effort to capture the quiet, inward mood of the often snowy spring landscape of the Northern Catskill Mountains of New York during the COVID-19 pandemic.