Wild Work in Oil and Cold Wax

Shelly's painting in oil/cold wax/graphite on Arches Oil Paper

Wild women met recently at my studio for "Expressive Abstraction in Oil and Cold Wax." They produced wonderful completed work and work in progress. 

Very early stages left to dry.

All the students were experienced painters but had not used cold wax before. They had to learn to let layers dry and not to overwork the pieces in the early stages, which we all tend to do when we're starting out in this medium.

The trick is to work on a lot of pieces at once to let layers dry and also to become looser.

By the second day, all the artists had loosened up wonderfully and explored a lot of options in color, composition, incising, scraping back, and texturing. Thanks to all of you for a wonderful weekend!

Adding collage elements using cold wax medium as the glue

Adding and spreading paint and wax with a palette knife

Using a brayer to spread paint and texture

 A beautiful and dynamic finished piece.

Closeup of above

More of the lovely finished pieces from the class:

Detail from the piece at the top of the post. The piece was inspired by a painting of a young woman carrying another on her back.

Gold transfer leaf makes this piece sing, and the next few as well.

Covering over a piece in progress, then scraping and incising back produces complex simplicity.

Lively works in progress:

An Expressively Abstract Weekend Teaching in Seattle!

I didn't paint the piece above--the credit goes to Terry Smith who organized and hosted the two-day oil/cold wax workshop that I had the good fortune to teach last weekend at The Miller School of Art in Seattle.. I had a great group of students and had so much fun. Our participants ranged from experienced painters, intermediate painters, and beginners. All produced vibrant and stunning work! 

We worked on panels, Arches Oil Paper, and Stone Paper. I brought a lot of texture tools and students were inventive in finding additional ones. Students used plaster and Ceracolors in priming some of their boards, as well as acrylic gesso.

Participants experimented with adding gold transfer leaf for accents.

The piece above was the first picture this student ever painted!

Above: Applying oil and cold wax with a palette knife

Adding oil pastel, above

A touch of stamping above, on the right

Complex Simplicity can be seen above

Scraping off excess transfer leaf, above

Using a squeegee to move paint around, above

Above, a student's rusted paper collaged with cold wax

Above, another strong piece from a beginning painter

Incising, above

Above, spreading oil and cold wax over oil pastel marks on Arches Oil Paper

By the second day, everyone got bold and adventurous. It shows beautifully in their work.