Chris Cozen's Faux Encaustic Class

Chris spreading the Faux Encaustic on the picture.

So many great classes to choose from lately. On Halloween day, I was very lucky to get a seat in Chris Cozen's Faux Encaustic class at Stamping Details. We worked with the fabulous Golden products and as you know, it's a language in itself. Needless to say, when Chris was giving the formulas, I struggled to follow along. I tried to write them down, but didn't do so well, so gave up and just started slathering the paints on my canvas. Fortunately Nina wrote down the formulas and shared. Nina is so much more art savy than I and was a life saver for me in this class.

Nina and her beautiful creations.

We used soft gel medium to adhere collage images to the canvas. After the images were dry, we used a palette knife to add two colors of Golden Fluid Acrylic paint to the canvas. After that dried, we selected a third accent color and painted it on a rubber thing, which was then pressed onto the canvas. The checkerboard looking thing is used under carpet padding. I believe it can be purchased by the yard.

These are two of my creations...still very wet.

Chris gave us a few different formula's, including a base of acrylic ground for pastel or soft gel medium. The formula we decided to use dried the fastest, consisting of less than 1/4 cup Golden Fluid Matt Medium for each 8"x8" canvas, with a drop of Quinacridone/Nickel Azo Gold. Another formula substituted the gold for 3 drops of Interference blue and 2 drops of Iridescent gold to add a sheen to the finished look. You spread the mixture all over the canvas. It can be a finished piece at that point, or you can continue to add more layers of paint, stamping, collage, etc.