R&F Handmade Paints

There are so many questions that keep popping up about the materials that we use, where they come from, and how they are processed.  When we talk about beeswax,  terms such as Pharmaceutical grade, bleaching, refined and filtered are commonly used.  This blog seeks to offer up the materials definitions that are most important to you.

Worker honeybee with wax scales from Beeswax: Production, Harvesting, Processing and Products by William Coggshall & Roger Morse, published by Wicwas Press, 1984.

Beeswax is secreted by wax glands in the bee’s abdominal area and used to create the honeycombs of the hive. Pure beeswax is composed solely of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. Its natural color when it is secreted is white. When beeswax is harvested from the hive it is often contaminated with impurities, which discolor it. At this stage it is called unrefined or crude beeswax.

Crude Beeswax from Ethiopia

Unrefined or crude beeswax is colored in a range of earthy hues from yellow to black. This coloration is caused by pollen, propolis (resin), and dirt. If you use unrefined wax for its color, it is important not to assume that the color is permanent because the color  is organic matter, which is not necessarily stable in light and is subject to fading, darkening, or a color shift. (See below for variations of crude beeswax)

Crude Beeswax Domestic

Crude Beeswax from New Zealand

These are reasons why you would most likely want to use decolorized, white beeswax for encaustic. You may wonder how does the wax get whitened? Artist manufacturers avoid the term ”bleached beeswax” because it implies the use of chemical bleaches. But the wax industry uses the term for the mechanical as well as the chemical methods of decolorizing beeswax.

Chemical bleaching is not the best choice for artists for two reasons. For one, chemical bleaching (which uses either potassium permangenate & phosphoric acid or sulfuric acid or various peroxides) does not always mean removing the colorant. In many cases it simply masks it. It is often used to whiten colorants that non-chemical bleaching can’t, but these colorants can later return to their original color. Furthermore, chemical bleaching can be harsh on the wax, creating free fatty acids and making the wax more reactive to pigments and pollutants.

Sun bleached beeswax plant from The Chemistry and Technology of Waxes by Albin H. Warth, published by Reinhold Publishing Company, 1956.

Sun bleaching exposes the wax to the ultraviolet light of the sun, which breaks down the colorants. This is a gentle and effective method of decolorizing the wax. The process, however, is expensive on an industrial scale because it requires so much space, but it is also the most accessible method for artists who want to bleach their own wax on a small scale.

Filtration is a process in which the wax is forced under high pressure through filters of activated carbon and clay that absorb the colorants and take out all foreign matter. Filtration is preferable to chemical bleaching because it maintains the structural integrity of the wax. It is also, in the long run, the least expensive and the most practical of the three methods. It is the best choice for artist material.

Example of a Filter

Pharmaceutical grade beeswax is a standard set by the government that certifies that the wax meets certain chemical requirements and that it is pure beeswax. The chemical standards (such as its ability to be saponified) are of importance to the cosmetic and pharmaceutical use of beeswax. For the artist, the real importance of pharmaceutical grade beeswax is that it is a guarantee that the beeswax has not been adulterated with other waxes (such as paraffin or microcrystalline), rosins, stearic acid, or tallow. However, the term pharmaceutical grade does not refer to the method by which it has been decolorized. Artists should seek out wax that is both guaranteed 100% beeswax and filtered or sun bleached.

And, in case you’re wondering, R&F uses only pharmaceutical grade filtered beeswax.

This blog is an amplification of comments that I originally posted on www.AMIEN.org.

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Ultramarine Blue Pigment

Ultramarine Blue has a fabled history. It is naturally derived from the semiprecious gemstone lapis lazuli. It gets its name from the Latin, meaning beyond the sea, since the best source of lapis was in the northeastern corner what is now Afghanistan. (more…)

viridian and diarylide yellow

In a previous blog, I noted that most inorganic pigments are opaque, except when a molecule of water is bonded to the pigment crystal. That “water of crystallization” makes an inorganic pigment, like viridian, translucent.

On the other hand, (more…)

Christine Marmo

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Reni Gower is a Professor of Painting and Printmaking at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA.  She is also the force behind the Divas and Iron Chefs of Encaustic and has launched a new website showcasing much of her work.  Notably, she has included a page with tutorial videos from last years Encaustic Painting Conference at Montserrat College of Art. There are six different videos containing quite a bit of information from some well-known encaustic painters. Check it out….

The Divas and Iron Chefs at VCU

The thing about color that every artist comes to understand is that colors do not exist by themselves in the abstract.  (more…)

A pigment is just a chemical that, due to its chemistry, absorbs certain wavelengths of light and reflects those wavelengths it doesn’t absorb. What it reflects is its color. Sounds simple enough. But when you think about it, it’s almost surreal that the chemicals that compose a color in no way look like it. (more…)

Those of you who have used our Encaustic Gesso have no doubt come to love its soft, toothy, absorbent surface. But that surface also offers a range of possibilities beyond encaustic.

Lately in preparing panels for the talk I give on painting materials and the effects of different mediums, I used the Encaustic Gesso to paint egg and glue temperas on. It was fabulous. The paint absorbed into the ground with a bright velvety matte look.

In past times I had to rely on the traditional ground for temperas  — rabbit skin glue and chalk gesso. Its history goes back to ancient times. It too has a beautiful chalky surface, and there’s the romance of the historical connection. But have any of you ever tried making it? That part’s not romantic. It’s slow, tedious, laborious, and VERY easy to screw up if you don’t lay it on just right and with the right balance of water, glue, and chalk.

 But where the glue gesso can take an entire day (which is why one would make 20 panels at a time instead of just one), applying our Encaustic Gesso meant just opening the jar, brushing it on to the panel and letting it dry. The second coat could be applied at any time later. Plus, I didn’t need to sand. The gesso levels well enough with minimal brush marks.

Oil paint can also be used on the Encaustic Ground. The ground should be given a size coat of dilute acrylic medium so it won’t absorb too much of the oil. It gives the paint a lean matte look compared to its glossy wet look when  applied on acrylic gesso.

–Richard

I will be speaking at a forum on encaustic painting at Virginia Commonwealth University on October 22^nd. The title of my talk is “Ancient Encaustic Painters.” The forum is part of The Divas and Iron Chefs of Encaustic, an encaustic extravaganza organized by Reni Gower, professor of art at VCU.
The event includes simultaneous demonstrations by 6 encaustic painters displaying their individual techniques, an exhibit of paintings by the featured artists as well as the forum in which the artists discuss the intertwining of their concepts with encaustic. Along with Reni and me, the participants are Kristy Deetz from DePere WI, Peter Dykhuis from Bedford, Nova Scotia, Lorraine Glessner Philadelphia, PA, Cheryl Goldsleger from Athens, GA, Jeff Hirst from Minneapolis, MN, and Tim McDowell from West Mystic, CT.

Richard