Oil and Cold wax paintings can go through many iterations. The media itself has infinite possibilities and techniques. My tendency is to start with a simple idea, make some chaos with various mark making tools, then edit the chaos and make sense of it all into a composition that works.
The techniques possible with cold wax are endless. In my early days with this medium, I tried them all, often in one piece. I've learned to dial myself in fairly early and choose a few patterns, stencils, colour theme and tools to give myself constraints. This helps direct my path and also creates less mess chaos in the studio – which is very easy to do with cold wax medium. Lets take a closer look at Effervescent and the tools and techniques used to create it.
Effervescence, 18" x 24" oil and cold wax on cradled panel
And the main tools :
Shown here: Brayer, rafia, textured wallpaper sample, drafting circle stencil (yes from my design days - ha) 1" Catalyst spatula, wood skewer and newsprint
Brayers of various sizes are used to apply cold wax, rafia pressed into the surface of tacky cold wax creates cool marks, texture wallpaper brayered into the surface creates texture and pulls up colour beneath a new cold wax layer. I use a ton of newsprint to compress each layer of wax with a hard brayer. This binds layers together and lifts off any extra wax on my surface allowing me to work faster.
Here is a close up of one area of the painting with some of these tools used:
Now, I cannot express how hard it is to get fine representational details in cold wax - the medium itself steers you away from detail. For this reason I vary my cold wax ratio in a couple areas of this painting, the muzzle area in particular, because I wanted it to feel smooth and soft. Have you ever snuggled with a horses muzzle? You know what I mean by how soft it is.
The dappled effect in cold wax came to a surprise success to me when I just kept layering wax with the 1" spatula - adding a couple overall glazes in between to unify the colour and give this painting the tremendous depth and glow. Here is a close up where perhaps you can better see the spatula marks:
For anyone interested I posted a timelapse photo montage on my facebook page - have a look at how it looked in various stages HERE
I really want to get this painting out of my studio and up showing somewhere, it is absolutely a show stopper and glows from afar. Or even better - someone's home! This painting (as of writing) is available on my website for $1 395.00 + shipping - click HERE to purchase
Do you have any questions about oil and cold wax medium? drop them in the comments below and I will be sure to answer you.
Thanks for Reading - Jennifer