I consider myself to be a mixed media artist, not strictly an encaustic painter. Though I use molten wax as my primary medium, I have more than one medium I use to create my art...oil paints, oil pastels, image transfers, collage, alcohol inks...but the one discovery that excited me the most was seeing these beautiful colours that were so vibrant, laid out perfectly in little pans like a super charged eye shadow ! I had to look at them closely when I first saw saw PanPastels in the art store. Hmmm, pastel reformatted to be used like paint!
Like a kid in a candy store, the art supply junkie in me wanted to gobble them all up.....I couldn't wait to try these with the encaustic. Much to my surprise, the pastels were a PERFECT fit for my encaustic work. I was hooked! The pastel paint glides on and is so blendable and with the tools you can buy specifically for PanPastels you can paint in fine details and lines. I am able to create entire backgrounds in these vibrant colours with ease. I still use encaustic paint in layers, but to a much lesser degree and my students LOVE PanPastels with encaustic.
This snowy owl painting was painted almost entirely with PanPastels on top of the encaustic. The owl itself was then painted with oil paints and PanPastels.
For the making of Mr. Snowy, you can click here
This video demonstrates how I used PanPastels to draw and then paint a bird...I created an encaustic background withpan pastels with stencils. With the use of the PanPastel fine line tool, I did the underpainting of the bird. This was one of my first experiments with pan pastel.
What I love is the ability to paint entire backgrounds with the PanPastels. A little goes a long way. It can be used as a way to touch up your paintings with a little color, or it can be used as a primary source of color for your entire painting...you can apply wax over it and the pigments will glide and mix in with the wax or you can gently drop the wax on the surface to leave the pan pastel unaltered. So many wonderful ways to work with this beautiful medium! Thank you PanPastel!!