How to Work With Paper

Encaustic painted on paper instead of wooden panels is another of the New England Wax projects we are currently undertaking. (I seem to have signed up for nearly everything - silly me.) This project has some restrictions (which I am choosing to view as guidelines) and it has a theme. The paper is supposed to be 300 lb watercolor paper, the size is 10" x 10", we are supposed to do four pieces and the theme is "Cycles." (The other theme proposed was Bugs. I liked that much better.)

I started right off by deciding to work very differently from the way I usually do and have some fun with ink on the paper.

Between Sea and Sky #1

Confession No. 1: I did not use 300 lb watercolor paper.
I used what I had, which I think was Rives BFK print paper, and I don't know what the weight was. First I cut some paper into 10" x 10" squares and then I messed around with brushes and pens and had a fine time. Then I cut up a bunch of old book pages and stuck them down with encaustic. Then I tore up a bunch of painted paper and stuck it down with encaustic. Then I painted over the ink with encaustic. Then I saw what I had and it was... not good.

Between Sea and Sky #2

Confession No. 2: I had no idea what I was cycling.
Well, I thought, if the whole is not good, maybe it will be good in parts. So I got out my knife and started cutting those 10" x 10" squares into strips. It was fun to arrange them in different sequences and maybe go back to the encaustic and paint a bit and maybe go back to the ink and paint a bit and move them around more.

Between Sea and Sky #3

Confession No. 3: I glued everything down on another piece of paper.
So I had all those strips and had to join them together somehow. First I thought of sewing them together, then I was going to overlay them with a thin piece of paper or cheesecloth. Then I thought of glue. Back to the cutting board I went to make more pieces of BFK, this time 11" x 11" so I could assemble the strips into the required 10" x 10" squares and have some room to overlap and let the glue seep out at the edge.

After I had glued down the four panels (a total of 20 strips), I weighted them down with the several copies of Jansen's History of Art that I keep for that purpose. The panels were mostly flat. I did have several strips that were pretty thick next to some that were pretty thin and this caused some problems, but I weighted them down again and left them overnight.

Between Sea and Sky #4

The next day, I removed the Jansen's and began filling in a few cracks between strips with encaustic. Then came my biggest and most tasking task - discovering the direction in which the panels should be shown and which sequence; I just had to find that Cycle.

I know you will concur that I have discovered the perfect sequence for these panels. I am calling it #1, #2, #3 and #4. Since they contain a lot of blue and white, I am calling them "Between Sea and Sky" and this is a perfect name for all the cycling.