Choice Research Project

I was inspired by the ocean and Maine's landscapes when creating these last few pieces for my choice project. I wanted to explore a new material, encaustic, and also still capture ocean scenes with this medium. Encaustic was sometimes difficult to work with or required extra time to organize and heat up. In the time I spent heating the wax for my encaustic pieces, I worked on a few watercolor and gouache pieces of Maine's landscapes, as well. Overall, the theme of the ocean and its alluring qualities inspired my pieces.

For two of my pieces, I used encaustic, a pigmented wax, and painted it onto wooden frames. I used a heat gun to move the wax around on the surface, blend the color, and create various textures. After the wax had solidified, I went over the encaustic pieces with oil pastels to enhance the color and detail. While not experimenting with encaustic, I created a few pieces using watercolor and gouache materials and combined them to form an ocean landscape. 

I started sketching out a few ideas in my notebook and originally decided to create three encaustic pieces. When I began, I knew I wanted to explore a new material, so I chose encaustic because working with melted wax sounded fun. I watched a few videos on how to go about it and went from there. As I continued and started working with the encaustic material, I decided to create only two pieces. I focused my energy on two, and after the wax cooled, I used oil pastels to refine them. I used oil pastels to improve the vibrance of the colors and also achieve greater detail. With the extra time that using encaustic created, I made a few watercolor and gouache pieces of an ocean scene. With these pieces, I aimed to develop my watercolor skills and color choices.