Cold Wax Workshop

 My workshop buddy, Sharla and I went to another fabulous workshop to explore something new to both of us, Cold Wax Oil Painting.  This was in San Luis Obispo and was led by Jerry McLaughlin who was very knowledgable, friendly, funny, hospitable and ok, he was just plain wonderful.
Here are four of my five pieces we worked on layering and scraping over the four days of learning the cold wax techniques.

12" x 16"

The first one has more of the feel of one of my monoprints and I liked the way the colors swirl around the piece.  This next one was a happy accident that I pushed into a new direction.  I had scraped through the layers to build up textures and then put another coat of white and turquoise wax on top which I didn't like so I decided to scrape it all off….and Voilá… adding a little more strategic turquoise this one was done.  It has a watery landscape feel to me.

12" x 16"

Then somehow or other I ended up in space.  After adding layers I scraped out the circle and then rolled a veil of red over part of the circle. Then placing a circle of wax paper over the scraped area I used a palette knife to add the black wax aura.  A couple of black lines balanced out the painting.

8" x 12"

I had also scraped the circle and lines out of this one and added the same idea of a black aura around the circle.  I was just about to throw the wax paper out when I notices the wonderful black wax from the aura technique and pressed it into the piece.  Using my little sticks from Sharla I added the black lines along the path through space.

12" x 16"

Check out Jerry at jerrymclaughlinart.com
There is also a wonderful book:
Cold Wax Medium: Techniques, Concepts & Conversations by Rebecca Crowell & Jerry McLaughlin