Want to take your collage skills to another level, quite literally? In addition to having archival qualities, encaustic (a wax-based “paint”) acts as both an adhesive and a medium, enabling you to reposition or remove collage elements easily, as well as add depth, translucency, and unique textural elements to your work.

In this playful, two-day workshop, mixed media artist Denby Dale will introduce you to some of the basic properties of encaustic (and collage) without any intimidation or fussy studio set-up!

Through demos and experimentation, you’ll learn how to:

• Prep flat wood panels with clear encaustic wax
• Create encaustic collage by:
• Adding color to encaustic panels using water-soluble artist crayons, colored pencils, chalk pastel, graphite, and India inks
• Adding texture to encaustic panels using an X-acto knife, lightweight carving tools, stencils and various imprinting materials
• Adding collage papers and fibers to encaustic panels
• Transferring toner-based images onto encaustic panels
• Layer clear wax over your collage elements to produce “floating” and textured effects
• Fuse layers of wax to seal your marks and imagery into the wax and create cohesive layers
• Remove wax to reveal underlying elements
• Reposition or remove unwanted elements
• Play with color and composition to create visually pleasing collages In addition to several small sample panels, students will leave the workshop with two original encaustic collages that incorporate various mark making techniques, collage papers, fibers, and/or transferred images.

This workshop is perfect for complete beginners, as well as those looking to refresh their skills.