Last Saturday, January 15th, was the 23rd anniversary of R&F’s founding in the now proverbial basement in Brooklyn. But what’s so special about a 23rd anniversary? It’s not a marker like a 20th or a 25th anniversary. I have to admit even we didn’t pay much attention to it here.

But then I got to thinking how much this year really does represent something very special in R&F’s history. This was the year that we collaborated with Ampersand Art Supply to create Encausticbord^TM, and that led to the introduction of the Encaustic Center, a fully integrated selection of encaustic paints, tools, and supports now available in art supply stores around the country.

Our 1st anniversary represented our continuation of commercial encaustic paint begun by Torch Art Supply in the late 1940s, which was for many years the only commercial encaustic paint in the world. But it was, particularly back then, a specialty paint relegated to the back corners of most art stores.

Original Torch Art Supply encaustics

R&F’s original hand cut encaustic cakes

Our 23rd anniversary represents the establishment of encaustic paint as a mainstream art material. While the symbol of a 20th anniversary is china and the symbol of a 25th is silver for R&F the Encaustic Center signifies this milestone in our history.

R&F's encaustic paint is available in three sizes (40 ml., 101 ml. and 333 ml.)

The Encaustic Paint Center

Interested in sampling colors or building your palette? Our new, smaller, 40ml  studio-size encaustic cakes offer a practical solution.  These heavily pigmented, ready-to-use paints are of the same quality that you know and love.  They are available in all of our 80 colors, along with our existing 104ml and 333ml sizes.

R&F Update: Partnerships for a New Era

R&F Handmade Paints has introduced a new bagged Encaustic Medium in pellet form. This medium is 45% less expensive by weight due to an innovative manufacturing process. Made of the same 100% Pharmaceutical Grade beeswax and damar resin as our popular cakes, this product is used to create transparency and extend encaustic paints. R&F’s medium is still available in standard cakes as well as in pellet form.

Bagged medium is available in convenient (1) one, (5) five, and (10) ten pound bags. Click here for a list of Retail Outlets in your area.

R&F has long carried two varieties of filtered beeswax; white and yellow.  This granulated beeswax can be purchased in bulk, for artists who are interested in making their own encaustic medium, or who wish to use the beeswax alone.
Our white beeswax is a light creamy off-white.  Our yellow beeswax has always been a slightly deeper pale yellow.  While there is certainly some difference between the two colors, we have decided to change our choice of yellow beeswax to a bolder, less pale variety.  R&F’s new yellow beeswax is a bright, golden yellow, that stands with distinction next to our soft, luminous white beeswax.
In processing this variety of yellow beeswax, crude beeswaxes are chosen which are known to produce a deeper color wax after filtering.  These waxes are then filtered in a way which removes the brown coloring agents in the beeswax, while leaving a percentage of the red colorants behind.  This yellow beeswax is a popular choice in the candle making industry, due to its warm, natural appearance.
We feel that this wax will give our customers more options when it comes to the color of their beeswax, because while the yellow wax can be used by itself, it can also be mixed with our white beeswax to give you a range of color options.

You may be aware of the wonderful instructional encaustic books by Joanne Mattera and Linda Womack.  Now we have a beautiful new book by Patricia Seggebruch called Encaustic Workshop: Artistic Techniques for Working with Wax.

From the jacket:

“In it’s purest form, encaustic painting is as simple as applying melted beeswax to an absorbent surface.  In Encaustic Workshop, it becomes much more: a dynamic medium where anything goes and the possibilities are endless.  Packed with step-by-step techniques, helpful tips and diverse examples of completed works, Encaustic Workshop brings all the accessibility and excitement of a mixed-media workshop to your own workspace.  If you’re a beginner, you’ll find everything you need to know to get started.  If you’re a more advanced crafter or fine artist, you’ll discover things you never knew you could do with encaustic.”

Browse all of our books here.

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

Many of you know that we have larger size custom sticks that measure 3″ and 2½” in diameter. We have made quite a few of these over the years and it is always impressive to hold that much paint in your hand. The other day we had a request for an even bigger stick and actually a different shape as well. What we ended up with was an Iridescent Silver stick measuring 3″ x 3″ x 10″. That is the equivalent volume of 7.83 of our standard large sticks. It weighs in at approximately 4 pounds and should make a pretty big mark.

Over the last 10 years, artists have had to reconcile themselves to the fact that manganese blue, one of the most beautiful of all blues available to the painter, is no longer being made. The pigment was first developed in the 1930s and was last manufactured in the 1970s. R&F had enough stock to produce manganese blue encaustic until early this year. In that short 70 some years, the color was justly renowned for its unmatchably clear cyan undertone.

The reason its production was discontinued is economical. Other than its value as an artist pigment, the main commercial use was to color cement (esp. for swimming pools). With such a limited market, modern safety requirements regarding its barium content made the processing of it too expensive.

After many years of fruitless search for remaining supplies, R&F decided to mix its own version of the color. To match it exactly is impossible. A phenomenon called “metamerism” means that a color made or mixed with one set of chemicals (such as cobalt blue and titanium white) may match a color mixed with another set of chemicals (such as ultramarine blue, phthalo blue, and titanium white) – but only in the light under which it is mixed. If the color, say, is matched under fluorescent light, it will not match at all under daylight.

In the case of a transparent color, the match is even trickier. The undertone may match, but only at the expense of the top tone. In many of our attempts the top tone was too red, while the undertone was too green. Painstaking trial and error finally resulted in a mix that we feel is close to the original manganese blue, and even more important, a color that is gorgeous in its own right.

The best part is that we will now make this color not only as an encaustic but as a Pigment Stick too.