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First Steps in Encaustic - Printable Version

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First Steps in Encaustic - Carlton Bach - 05-08-2005

I just started serious playing with encaustic paint and wanted to share my interim results, given there was some interest.

Here's my project: A Valkenburg pattern auxiliary shield. I made it from a double layer of birch plywood, strengthened at the back. It is glued with bone glue, rendered water resistant by adding alum, and backed and fronted with cloth fixed with casein glue. The design is loosely based on Trajan's Column, but mirrors no one device shown there.

[Image: DSC00321.jpg]

I used a cheap 'table pan' set from the flea market to keep the paint hot

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There were a few problems with temperature control, but basically it seemed to work fine. I opted for untreated beeswax as a colour base because I couldn't get clarified wax at decent prices, but it turned out not to be a problem. You can't see any yellow tint. I tried adding colophony resin, but it didn't dissolve in the wax the way it does in the suet used for treating window linen.

The pigment I opted to use first is 'English Red', an iron oxide earth.

[Image: a8484ca6.jpg]

I added about 1 1/2 tablespoons to a pan of wax and that seemed to work all right, though it took vigorous stirring (and some splashing about) before I had it all suspended.

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At this point I should point out that it is a good idea to cover the workplace. Encaustic paint does not wash or flake off. I chose an old bedsheet because I don't want wax-soaked newspaper near open flame.

Painting with encaustic takes a certain self-assurance in brushstrokes that I lack. You need to work quickly and make few mistakes because the paint sets quickly. I first did the outline of the design with a small brush, then filled in the areas between with a wider one.

[Image: 2e48ad00.jpg]

Encaustic paint that 'sets' too soon creates unsightly bumps and visible brushstrokes, and (important for a shield), it adds to the weight more than you might think. I know these from mummy portraits, but I don't want them on my board.

[Image: d9b07ce1.jpg]

So I cheated. I used my hot-air gun at its lowest setting (250°C, which is still overkill) to keep the paint liquid while spreading and smoothing it out. I don't think it's the Roman way, but it works.

[Image: f3e3821c.jpg]

This is the place I used as an example of 'bad' paint after using the gun on it.

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I haven't finished yet, but I don't know if I can manage the insdide design tonight. The central bar and the circles inside the star designs will be yellow (gold ochre) and the star rays white (chalk or zinc white, whichever works better). This is what the front looks like so far

[Image: 7a678e71.jpg]

and I am happy to report that when I deliberately spilled some water down it, not a drop soaked in. It all ran off.

I'll keep you posted.

Re: First Steps in Encaustic - Carlton Bach - 05-08-2005

Two additions at this point:

If you are using a natural bristle brush, leave it to rest outside the paint container. This is annoying because the wax in the brisltes hardens and you have to dip it into the hot paint for a few seconds before starting to work again to make it pliable. However, the bottom of the paint pot can be so hot that the bristles burn. I inadvertently ended up with half a brush.

And remember to open the window. I did not think wax could stink so bad.

Heat Guns - marsvigilia - 05-10-2005

I agree the Romans did not have heat guns.

They did however have a lot of campfires.
And in their workshops they probably had small forges.
Either would provide more than enough castoff heat to smooth out wax.

I am utterly fascinated. Thanks so much.

By the way how do you think it would work to top coat cassein paint with a clear encaustic?

Re: Heat Guns - Carlton Bach - 05-10-2005

Quote:By the way how do you think it would work to top coat cassein paint with a clear encaustic?

I've done a wax coating on an egg tempera shield and that turned out a mixed blessing (largely because I used unclarified beeswax, and too much. Unclarified is fine as a painting medium, but the yellow tint comes through this way).

The board I painted here is practically drenched in casein glue in the process of fixing the fabric front and backing, so I guess there won't be much of a difference with casein paints. One thing I have learned is that encaustic is a happy sticker. It sticks to rawhide, raw and oiled wood, even plastic and glass. THe approach certainly sounds worth a try.

excellent! - GaiusAquiliusBritannicus - 05-10-2005

Wow! Thanks! Very timely for me. I am getting ready to paint up two 10th Century Norse shields using linseed oil and pigment, but then it was going to be onto my Roman and Celtic shields.

Quick question, have you used linen or cotton canvas for your backing? I only have cotton right now and am curious as to the tactile differences between the two. I have a lot of linen tunics, but have never seen 'linen canvas' for sale and was just wondering if it was significantly different from a) normal linen material or b) from cotton canvas in weight.

Again, many thanks!

Britannicus

Re: excellent! - Carlton Bach - 05-10-2005

Quote:Wow! Thanks! Very timely for me. I am getting ready to paint up two 10th Century Norse shields using linseed oil and pigment, but then it was going to be onto my Roman and Celtic shields.

Quick question, have you used linen or cotton canvas for your backing? I only have cotton right now and am curious as to the tactile differences between the two. I have a lot of linen tunics, but have never seen 'linen canvas' for sale and was just wondering if it was significantly different from a) normal linen material or b) from cotton canvas in weight.

Again, many thanks!

Britannicus

I used linen as backing and front on one of my shields, but I found it makes no appreciable difference and now happily use up a stack of old cotton hospital bedsheets. If you want to get it absolutely right, my suggestion would be to get linen canvas - your best bet would be an art supply shop, or a garage sale where old bedclothes can be had. You can get it ion all kinds of weights, from shirting to sailcloth, but except for being rougher it doesn't differ too much from 'normal' linen cloth.

I have to say I am curious about the oil paint method. I hae read that milk paint was used widely, and I know Theophilus Presbyter suggests egg tempera with a linseed oil varnish, but I've never heard of oil paint used on shields. It would make sense, I guess.

linseed oil and pigment - GaiusAquiliusBritannicus - 05-11-2005

Thanks!

I did some research into the egg tempura method and milk paint and have not found much before the 16th century for milk paint, and though egg tempura has been around a while(10th century I found, but before that? I haven't found much...others might know more...), but per this website:
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~chrisand ... hield.html
it seems the norse also used oil and pigment, so thats what I'm going to attempt to recreate. I was planning on using the egg tempura method until I found that website and read this in the footnotes:

[6] Red pigments in ancient paints seem to derive from mineral sources ie. red ochre (Fe2O3, as on the Jelling figurine: Marxen and Molkte 1981); or cinnabar (HgS, as on the Illerup shield of c.200AD: Forhistoriskmuseet, Moesgard Denmark: pers. obs. 1994). Also on the Jelling figurine were a dark blue paint made by mixing powdered white chalk with burnt organic matter (charcoal?), and a yellow of orpiment (As2O3) in an oil base.

I know it mentions a figurine over a shield, but honestly, I'm just more interested in pursuing the oil method over the tempura method. I'll let you know how it goes.

What are you planning on edging your shield with? Rawhide or brass? Keep us posted!

Gratis!

Britannicus

heat? - GaiusAquiliusBritannicus - 05-11-2005

Also, how will the encaustic method stand up to 100 degree F days? In the midwest our courboli leather can get quite soft and lose its shape in our summer weather.

Will the encaustic paint 'run' under this type of heat? Or does beeswax have a higher melting point?

Uale!

Britannicus

Beeswax Melting Point - marsvigilia - 05-11-2005

Beeswax has a melting point of 146 dF.
If it gets that hot where you are, you need to move.
(Preferably in an air conditioned car)
On the other hand beeswax might start to soften a bit under 146.
Experience will tell.
And hopefully, you'll tell us.

Re: linseed oil and pigment - Carlton Bach - 05-12-2005

Quote:Thanks!

I did some research into the egg tempura method and milk paint and have not found much before the 16th century for milk paint, and though egg tempura has been around a while(10th century I found, but before that? I haven't found much...others might know more...), but per this website:
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~chrisand ... hield.html
it seems the norse also used oil and pigment, so thats what I'm going to attempt to recreate. I was planning on using the egg tempura method until I found that website and read this in the footnotes:

[6] Red pigments in ancient paints seem to derive from mineral sources ie. red ochre (Fe2O3, as on the Jelling figurine: Marxen and Molkte 1981); or cinnabar (HgS, as on the Illerup shield of c.200AD: Forhistoriskmuseet, Moesgard Denmark: pers. obs. 1994). Also on the Jelling figurine were a dark blue paint made by mixing powdered white chalk with burnt organic matter (charcoal?), and a yellow of orpiment (As2O3) in an oil base.

I know it mentions a figurine over a shield, but honestly, I'm just more interested in pursuing the oil method over the tempura method. I'll let you know how it goes.

THis is interesting. There's plenty of books that say oil paint is a newer development, but Theophilus Presbyter mentions it for furniture. I wonder whether it is suitable for shields. It shoud certainy stand up to moisture better than tempera.

Quote:What are you planning on edging your shield with? Rawhide or brass? Keep us posted!

I'm still thinking about this. Rawhide would be the easy way out and I know I can do it. Brass, on the other hand, would make me much happier. I'm just not sure making an oval rim my first foray into metalwork is a good idea. I'll probably use rawhide or cuirboulli here and try my hand at brass with my hexagonal shield. I certainly want brass on my scutum, but that may be a while. As you can see from the photos, I don't really have a workshop.

Will continue this WE and post more.

ecaustic website - GaiusAquiliusBritannicus - 05-30-2005

Ave! just thought I would post a great site I found for encaustic materials...there are a lot out there, but this one is in the states (NY) and had a lot to offer for reasonable prices:

www.fineartstore.com

I just bought some of their encaustic medium and enough beeswax and damar resin to make the medium myself when I have more time. I plan on buying an electric griddle and their metal paint tins to keep the wax paint at an even temp. I'll also post pictures once my projects are done.

For those who have done this sort of painting before, does the damar resin make any appreciable difference in shield painting? Or is it mainly for clarifying portrait-type artwork?

Thanks again Carlton for posting your experience! Without your pictures, I doubt I would have been brave enough to try it myself.

Britannicus

Re: ecaustic website - Carlton Bach - 05-30-2005

Quote:For those who have done this sort of painting before, does the damar resin make any appreciable difference in shield painting? Or is it mainly for clarifying portrait-type artwork?

I used colophony, and I can say that after drying out it does seem to make a difference in hardness and smoothness. I feel sorry I did some of the work in straight wax.

It does rub off when pushed or hit. And it will soften under direct sunlight, though not badly enough to run (I did a workshop on wax-hardened leather flasks and costrels last weekend and left one in the sun in 30°C weather. Aftzer about two hours the surface was covered in gelatinous wax that would soak into cloth touching it. I hope resin will do something about that, and I also suspect there would be some other protection. I heard about thin rawhide overlaying the shield, made transparent by brushing on linseed oil. I don't belierve it, but i said the same thing about treating linen with resin and tallow to make windows...

Goods luck!

update - GaiusAquiliusBritannicus - 05-31-2005

I just spoke with Mike at fineartsstore.com and asked him about adding the resin to the encaustic mix. He was skeptical about using this method of painting for shields because he didn't know how it would handle the abuse of combat, but he did confirm that by adding Damar resin in large quanties (he suggested a 1:1 ratio of resin to wax), the melting point would be raised for the wax and the paint would become considerably more durable, while also increasing the vibrancy of the colors used.

The process for adding the resin to the wax would be this (his recommendation): heat the wax to liquid state, then add equal parts resin. Note that the resin will contain bug and tree parts, so he suggested straining this mixture through some sort of filter using a heat gun to keep the mixture liquid. He said that the resin starts to melt at around 200 degrees F, but don't let the wax mixture temp go above 220 F, as the wax will burn and discolor. Once the resin is filtered and melted, reduce temperature to somewhere around 150 degree F and then add pigment and completely mix. He recommended using several cans to facilitate the mixing process.

I'm still in the process of making my norse shields, but this is my plan for them before I try any of this on my roman shields (all of this will be painted on canvas coated with a thin layer of gesso): I plan on painting one with distemper paint (basically glue, alum, and pigment), one with casein paint (milk paint...which I may cover with a thing coat of wax for protection from the rain), one with temperura, and one with encaustic. The last shield of the 5 norse shields will be painted with whatever method gave the best results. I need to have these done by the middle of June, so I should be able to post my results within a few weeks.

I love living history! Smile

Though I don't know if my bank account does! Confusedhock:

Britannicus

My attempts at encaustic - long - GaiusAquiliusBritannicus - 06-09-2005

Ave!

Just thought I'd update those interested in my attempts at encaustic. Before I try my hand at a roman shield, I had a project to get five 11th century Norse shields made. I painted 2 out of distemper, 1 with egg tempera, 1 with Casein and 1 with encaustic....or rather, I should say that I *tried* to paint with encaustic! :roll: Wow, not as easy as one might think.

I will post pictures of the shields later (when I can convince a friend of mine to host them on his website), but a quick summary was as follows re: the encaustic painting:

I used yellow, filtered beeswax and damar resin from fineartstore.com, and attempted to melt them together in a 1:1 ratio to harden the wax and raise its boiling point. Beeswax will 'burn' at temperatures over 220 degrees F and much as I tried not to, I burned the beeswax when I heated it up. So what does burned, liquid beeswax look like? basically, just darker beeswax. It definitely took on a dark colored hue, but since I was using red hematite pigment and black pigment, I didn't think it would matter to the final color of the shield. I think I was right in that aspect, as the colors looked great once mixed and applied.

After heating the wax to about 160 degrees F to fully melt the chunks of wax, I proceeded to heat the mixture to over 200 degrees F to add and melt the Damar resin. This is when I burned the wax. When adding the Damar resin I added about thumbnail sized pieces, and man, that's just too big. You need to really crush the resin down to very small pieces before adding to the wax for a nice, even melt that is easy to work with and later filter. After I heated the wax/resin mix to above 220F, I was able to melt the resin and then strain through a cheap tea strainer into a cheap, disposable bread pan. It was in this pan that I mixed my paint. The red mixed wonderfully, the black took a little more pigment and a lot more stirring (more on all that later).

I didn't use any special brushes to paint on the wax, but probably should have. I waited to start painting the wax on the shield until the temp had dropped to 160F, at which point it initially went onto the shield like 'normal' paint-- very fluid, very smooth, almost even watery. But within a few seconds, it hardened and caused the wax to look very rough. I decided that it didn't look as nice as Carlton's, but that I would move forward and keep trying, hoping I would get better. Well, the pictures will attest to the fact that I need a lot more practice!!

The heat gun didn't work as nicely for me as for Carlton, mainly because the norse round shiled was created by using planks of wood instead of plywood, and these planks were not even across the face of the shield, so it created ridges that the wax flowed off of-- this created pooling in the low areas, and thin spots on the high points when the heat gun was applied. After using the heat gun on three sections of the shield I have stopped, as I caused the black paint to bleed seriously into the red paint, destroying the 'edge' affect between the two.

I have paused on this shield and have studied the Dura Europas shield with great interest...I think that they must have not used a 'heat gun' approach to smoothing it out (ie, they probably did not use 'passive' heating and gravity to smooth out the wax), but something more like a hot iron or metal form that was placed over the shield and then heated and pressed down to smooth the wax out (our modern equivalent would be this: http://www.fineartstore.com/cgistore/st ... 528564.984 ). I plan on buying one of these next month and trying that out to smooth the wax down.

Overall, I was impressed that the weight added tot he shield wasn't more noticeable. It was apparent, but not a huge addition, like I had originally thought it would be.

Some other notes in no certain order:

-If you want to paint with encaustic paints, buy the premixed encaustic wax/resin combo (and maybe even the premixed colors, too, if you don't like making your own)....mixing the wax and resin yourself can be tricky and a royal pain in the backside if you're not VERY patient and very thorough in your prep.
-No really. I'm not joking. Buy the premixed combo!! :lol:
-The damar resin needs to be filtered as it has a lot of tree bits and bugs in it after melting, but brother, it is very sticky stuff!
-iron hematite is a great pigment that mixes well in the wax, but other, less metallic and more 'powerdery' pigments take some vigourous stirring to mix well.
-invest in a simple electric pancake gridle to control your heat. I used a Coleman outdoor gas stove with both a gridle and a double boiler to heat my mixtures and it was very hard to keep the temperatures constant where you need them to be.
-the resin/wax combo was very strong and durable after mixing and cooling.
-encaustic colors are very vibrant. they look great!
-Molten wax is hot. Don't wear shorts if you're a messy painter/mixer. Confusedhock:
-its great to have a helper for some of the steps. My wife Mindi painted a few sections of the shield while I took pictures, and we both agreed it was tougher than it looked!
-I'm a much better distemper and casein painter!
More later when I can post the pics....

I really want to make a scutum or late 3rd century oval now, though! Overall the process was incredibly fun and I'm eager to find the 'right' tools to create the very smooth look that the D.E. shield seems to have.

Uale!

Britannicus

Re: First Steps in Encaustic - Gaius.Cornelius - 06-19-2005

I am inspired! I think I will take the advice of going for the premixed encaustic medium. How much will I need? What coverage does this medium give?