Encaustics
Presently, Lana is intrigued with Encaustic painting. For her, it’s a different form of painting. Encaustics involve a heated wax medium to which she adds different colors of pigments. She applies the melted wax to a surface—usually a canvas or an encaustic board. She uses a combination of beeswax and damar resin for her paintings. For pigmentation, she usually uses dried powdered pigments, though sometimes she uses pre-pigmented waxes. She also incorporates inks and oil pastels and powdered pastels to the melted wax for her paintings. She pours different colors of melted wax into a cupcake pan, lets it harden and then releases the wax for future use.
Lana uses heated metal tools, special brushes, spatulas, knives and scrapers to manipulate the wax onto the surface she’s working on. Additionally, she uses heat lamps, small torches, heat guns, and other methods of applying heat to the applied encaustic wax to fuse and bind the medium. Because the encaustic medium is thermally malleable, Lana also uses the medium to sculpt, and encase or sandwich in between many the layers of the medium. Sometimes, after many layers of wax, the original image is barely visible.
