First Steps in Encaustic

[GaiusAquiliusBritannicus]

Gaius,

Unfortunately, I haven't used the premixed medium yet, so I really couldn't tell you how much of it you would need for your shield, but I can tell you that I used 2 beeswax pellets that weighed in at about 100 grams (I'll double check that just to make sure later), and then added to that an equal amount of Damar resin for a 1:1 ratio. I then added about 1 - 2 teaspoons of pigment to the wax to get the desired color, and it went pretty far. The only reason I recommended the premixed stuff was that it comes in colors already and the mixing process is very sticky and very sensitive to temp. changes. But this week I found the 1:1 ratio wasn't enough to keep my shield from melting, so maybe the premixed stuff won't either....

I'm working to get the pictures up on a website to show you my results. I just returned from my event where I displayed my norse shields and handed off the cd with all of my construction pictures to my friend who will be posting it on his website sometime tomorrow night (hopefully).

But WOW! hock: The 1:1 ratio is either not enough resin or else the Romans added something else to keep the wax from melting off of the shield. When you see my pictures you'll see that the shield melted in a matter of hours in the sunlight. True, I used a black and red paint combination, so both colors would absorb a lot of sun and heat, but there is no way that this ratio is workable for an outdoor shield exposed to 80F or greater temperatures. Something else needs to be done to raise the melting point of the wax to a very high temperature (or else I completely botched the mixing job, but I don't think I did... :? ). I would love to find a paper on the chemical analysis of the Dura Europos shield to see what was 'officially' listed.

One interesting thing though is that if the sun melts off the majority of the wax from the shield, a very thin coating of wax is left on the canvas of the shield which is not too "tacky" or "sticky", nor is it in danger of melting further...maybe this is the proper technique for applying? Again, the pictures should make all of this a lot clearer and should be up tomorrow evening.

Uale!

Britannicus

[GaiusAquiliusBritannicus]

Ave!

Well my friend has posted the pics of the creation process, but we still need to organize them a little better and add my new pics of the melted shield (from sitting in the sun at the event).

If you'd like to see the process of making all of the shields (distemper sheilds are both the black and red (2 stripes of each color) and the black, red and gold striped shields, the egg tempura is the celtic cross shield with burgandy background, and the casein shield is the red cross shield on a black and gold background. Go here:
http://65.64.145.141/photos/images/Gaiu ... /index.htm

If you'd like to see the encaustic only, start here with these (the encaustic shield is the black and red shield with 3 stripes of black and 3 stripes of red):

http://65.64.145.141/photos/images/Gaiu ... index.html

The first few pics are of the other shields and my dog , but then the pics of the encaustic painting begins, with a few pictures of my other shields mixed in (we were doing multiple shields at once). Sorry if some of the images seem dark, I had cleaned them up on my pc with the free Picasa2 program (from Google), but evidently I didn't save them or something.

and try here for final product:
http://65.64.145.141/photos/images/Gaiu ... index.html

Again, not too happy with the finished product, but all in all a very fun experiment to try! As I stated in my last post, the 1:1 mixture of damar resin and beeswax was not enough to prevent the wax from turning into a puddle once the noon sun hit it.

Britannicus