Soul Searching: Citra Encaustic?

This is my latest discovery: CitraSolv backgrounds plus beeswax mounted onto 6" x 12" plywood. I love encaustic art. Someday I want to try my hand at it. Right now the cost of the materials needed is too prohibitive for me. So I started thinking about what I like about encaustics: the wax layers and the cloudy look on parts of the paintings.

Thanks to Suzi Blu and her Petite Dolls Class I had worked with melting beeswax onto paintings that were mounted on plywood. I thought I would try that with the backgrounds just to see what effect I would get.

The page I chose to work with wasn't quite 12" long to accommodate the length of the plywood. So I cut a strip from another similar background and mounted both to the plywood. Then I just melted the wax over the piece. Some places I had more wax buildup than others to give a more opaque look to the finished piece.

I had this charm that I ordered from Judy Wilkenfeld's wonderful Etsy shop. I knew I would use it in something special one day. So I dug it out and she fit perfectly in the little area near the top. I even used the beeswax to attach her. After she was attached, I figured out the title for the piece: "Soul Searching".

I really like the look of this. I'm not sure the photos really do it justice. Here are a few closeup shots that I took with the light hitting it at different angles so you can see the wax on the piece:

The cloudy areas are where the wax built up.

Here is the original CitraSolv paper cropped to the area in the photo above. You can see how adding the wax changes the look of the paper.

I love working with the beeswax and until I can do the authentic version of encaustics, I think I'll stick with experimenting this way!