Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hello and welcome to this class on photo encaustic transfers. I am Sarah Reimer. I have been a working artist for over 20 years and working
in encaustic since 2004. I also currently teach classes all over the
country and have been doing so in encaustic painting and other mixed media for
the last ten years. In this class, we will
look at how to prepare your substrate to get the
best transfer possible, as well as what images work well for laser print
based transfers. I will also show you
how to hand color your transfers and further alter
them with encaustic paint. All while being mindful
of fusing techniques. Let's get started.
2. Sizing panels with encaustic medium: So here I have a wooden panel that has a code of
encaustic Gesso on it. It's a cradle panel, wooden panels because they are made of a natural material. And there's generally
some moisture in them when we're
going to fuse. And again, a reminder
is fusing is applying heat with some sort
of heating element, whether it's a heat gun
or attacking iron to our WACC surfaces in
order to bond them to both the board
and to each other. While we're going through
and we're fusing. Panels tend to throw a
few more air bubbles. So it's just one of those
things to keep in mind if it's been a time of year that's been particularly wet and damp, you're probably going to get some more air bubbles coming up through your surface than you
would on a Mesa night pal. First things first. Again, we've already got our sites taped off. If it was a new
wood Caustic board, you'll want to go through
and take your sides up as well so that you've got everything nice and
secure before we start painting on it so that the edges of your board stay
nice and clean. So the first thing that I want
to do is warm or my panel. Taking a hot materials such as the encaustic medium
directly to a cold panel. What's going to happen is that brush is going to seize up. It's going to cause the brush
to cool down too quickly. And when the brush cools
down that quickly, it's going to end up leaving
some texture behind. We want to get a pretty
smooth surface upfront. Again, back to a, we want to pre warm our panel. A warm panel is going to allow this paint to
flow more smoothly. So I'm gonna go in
here with my heat gun and I'm gonna get
it powered off. I don't need it
particularly hot. Got it at about medium
heat and on a low fan. I'm just going to use it to sort of warm through the surface. The other alternative
two is that if my path palate is clean, I can just literally turned my board upside
down on my palette. But the more we are
working with paint, that may not be an
option for you to have both of those
available to you. So you can always use
the heat gun to just gently warm the
surface of the board. And then as we're starting to fuse and we continue working, it will continue bringing
the core of that panel up to heat and you'll continue
to get smoother surfaces. After every layer. I don't want to stay in any
one place for too long. I run the risk of
burning the vessel with a heat gun because the heat
gun does get pretty warm. So just be aware of that, keep things moving around. Turn that off, set
that to the side. Be really careful. The tip of your heat
gun is gonna be really War since
you're just used it. I'm gonna come in
here, I'm gonna get some encaustic
medium on my brush. I want my brush
good and saturated, but I don't want it
pouring out of there. And I think that
that's something we run into a lot when we're just starting to work in this
is that we either have too much material on our
brush or not enough. One sweep that way, running up a little bit
as I get to the bottom, just because this panel is
not a 100% coming to eat yet. Down russia over. Notice I'm not scrubbing
back and forth like I may have done with the Gesso. I want as few brush strokes
as possible in here. The fewer the brush strokes, the easier time
I'm going to have fusing to get that
smooth surface. I'm going to kick this
fan up too high just to get things moving
a little more. I'll turn this off
for just a moment so you can hear me
a little better. So a couple of things
to keep in mind. When I'm working
with the heat gun, I don't generally want to have it in an up and down position. I'll end with circular motions. And at that point, what's going to end up
happening there with the circular is that it
will leave markings behind. So I will go ahead and go at an angle so that the air hits
the surface and flows off. I'm also going to start
this first row facing myself so that I don't blow
the wax away from the edge. And then I'm going
to flip around and work my way up the board. I'll go through
this whole process so that you can watch me put the few coats down and be
able to get an idea on that. I'm starting my
fusing again with this first row facing me so that it does not follow
the wax away from the edge. I'm going to also sort of
give it a little bit of a shake that helps
disrupt any air bubbles. And rather it helps. It helps break up the airflow and it will get rid of any
air bubbles in there. So keep it at an angle. Again, sort of give it a little shake as you're
working your way up. The first coat is probably
going to be relatively uneven as the wax into
the Justo and the water. I'm gonna give this
just a second to come back to solid before I go
in with a second layer, I don't want to
go in right away. If I go in on a really hot
panel with a really hot brush, what's going to end
up happening is that I will pull the wax that's on their backup and
that will be problematic. So reload my brush
a little bit here, and now I'm going to switch
directions so that if I do have any uneven areas, it will help fill that in. I'm going to do the
exact same thing and give this layer a using give a little shake it, those air bubbles out of there. And again, same thing. I'm gonna give this a few
moments to come back to solid before I go back in with
this final third coat.
3. Refining the surface through scraping: Sometimes you'll
have a little bit of extra unwanted texture
in your surface. Be it you either
missed a spot fusing or your candle
wasn't warm enough. There's a variety of reasons. While you may end up
with a little bit of extra texture left behind. And so we do really want to make sure these first few layers are fairly flat before we go on
to additional processes, be an image transfers, collaging, paper,
painting, whatever. The smoother we can
have the surface, the more control we're
going to have later on with other applications, we want to go with a couple of tools
that are really useful for refining the surface are
going to be something as simple as a pottery loop
or a single edge razor. I like both equally, it just depends on what you
feel more comfortable with. I particularly like this
shape pottery loop. I find it to be
really versatile. I have the nice wide flat side, plus I have two smaller edges
to be able to scrape when. So when I'm coming in here, I can feel I've got
some areas that I've got a little bit of
extra wax on the side, or I've got a little bit of brush stroke in the center here. Sometimes it's easier to
scrape a little bit then to continue to hit it with
a heat gun and fuse, and fuse and fuse. And perhaps either
overviews and burn the wax or end up creating pools
or an uneven surface. So I'm just going to come in here and I'm
going to lightly run the pottery loop
over the surface. Every few swipes. I'll go ahead and I'll
clean this excess off. Then just toss it back
in my couple of medium. If you don't, the
more you scrape, it tends to fold over on itself and it will
just redeposit on the surface. It's pretty thin. I'm not pulling much up. I'm just ever so slightly
evening things out. If your tools start
getting too sticky, go ahead and get
yourself a piece of paper towel at the ready. And then I'll usually just
set it on the palette for a moment or two to heat
up and then wipe it off. You're going to
obviously want to bend, let this tool cool back
off before you use it. Because if you take
something that's been heated up back to wax, chances are you're going
to end up scraping too much and make a
dividend the surface. Set that aside for one moment. Show you how the single
edge razor works. This is just something you can
get at the hardware store. It's a nice, easy, easy, cheap studio tool
that's very effective. Same thing. I'm just going to
lightly scrape on the surface to make sure I
get that good even coat. There wasn't much more
that came off of there because I got it fairly
even with the pottery loop, all that excess off and
back into my plane couple of medium because I don't have any color
happening right now. After I scraped the surface, I will usually then go in with the heat gun
and just give it one quick once-over or a torch
or something like that, just to make sure and get out any burn marks that are left behind from
the scraping tools. There we go. We've got a nicely sized
panel that will be ready for our next round of painting, collaging, image transfer,
embedding a photo, whatever's going to be the
next step for this board.
4. Image transfers with a photo from a laser print: Higher contrast is going to
be better with your transfer. So first thing I'm gonna
do is I'm gonna come in here and I'm going to
flip this upside down. Make sure I have
my image centered. Turn this back over. Now I'm going to come in
with my burnishing tool and I'm just gonna
give it a good overall burnish to make sure
that it's stuck to the surface and that it
doesn't miss register on me. I do generally when I'm printing out my images to transfer, I'll usually print
out two of them, especially if I've gone
through and resize things and also done any edits to the contrast
or things like that. It's just helpful to have
a second one printed in case you it didn't work and
you need to start over. Or if you missed an area and you need to try to patch a little area back-in. It's helpful to have two
copies of everything. So I'm just going to
get my paper towel a little bit wet here. And these are the points at which if you're transfer
is not going to work. Here's some of the issues
we tend to encounter. Usually the first places that the board isn't sticky enough. It's been sitting too long, It hasn't been recently fused, so there's no stickiness
to grab on to that toner. The other issue too
is sometimes going in with too much water too quickly. If you get the paper
too wet before you've had sufficient
amount of burnishing, chances are you're
going to run into some issues where
you're going to have some skipped areas. So I'm gonna come over
here and I'm just going to lightly dampened down
the back of the paper. Then I'm going to come in and I'm going to work in quadrants. It's very easy to end
up missing an area. So if you're working
on a larger image, you may want to even draw
yourself a little bit of a guide or quadrant guide on the back of this
with a pencil. Just so that you know,
you've hit every area. In image transfer this
size may take you about 20 minutes to a half
an hour to accomplish, and this is about a six-by-six. So pace yourself and start with a small one
till you get used to it, and then you can work
up to larger ones. So I'm gonna come in here
with another pass with water and switch directions. They usually like to switch
directions a couple of times just so that I know that
I've gotten everything, especially my edges
and my corners, those tend to be parts
that are missed. If you want a more sort of age, the broken apart image, that would be a time where you could be a little
more haphazard about this and see if you can get that sort
of broken apart. Looking image. If you find your paper starts
breaking up and you know, you're only on maybe
your third pass, and this will take about
four to five passes. Then you may want to put
down a sheet of parchment, paper and burnish on top
of the parchment just so you can get good enough
traction and get everything. All transfer. This will be about my fourth
or fifth pass on here. I'm gonna go ahead and
get some more water. You should gradually
start to see the image coming through
the back of the paper. With every pass, that'll
build up a little bit more. If you're seeing the
paper looking this wet after your first pass, first or second pass with water, chances are you've probably introduce too much
water too quickly. And you're gonna end up
having some skipped areas. And so in that case, you can always work
the paper off of there and either continue
on with the piece and maybe you'll have some image
transfer on there and you'll like the broken apart sort of
aged and distressed image. Or it could be that
you may need to just scrape it off of there
and start again. So be a little bit
methodical so that you know, you've hit all the areas and you've got a
good transfer going. We want a really flat surface with this particular process. We don't want a lot
of air bubbles, we don't want a lot of
texture to our surface. If I have a lot of
texture or air bubbles, I'm going to have some
skipped areas of the image. So I think I'm going to go ahead and get that
piece of parchment. I'm gonna give it one more sort of break down with
water and then really, really vigorous
burnish to make sure that I do have everything
good and transfer. And then we'll start to work
the paper off of there. But I can tell my
papers breaking apart a little bit already. So I'm going to
put the parchment down just so that I can still
get some good traction. That should be about good. I can tell this paper, the paper is starting to break
apart a little bit on me so I can see my image
coming through the back. I think I've got most of it. I might have a spot
here or there that did not transfer where I think there might have been an
air bubble or two. If you've got an air
bubble or texture, There's no way you're
gonna be able to get that transfer down in there. So little spritz on
the back of water. This is the only time I
spray directly on the back. And then I'll just
use the tool to start breaking apart the
paper a little bit. And then I'll start
to use my hands to work it off of there. If it seems like the paper's
not wanting to come up, come in with more water. You can't hurt the
surface with water. So better to add
a little bit more and get that paper
worked off of there. Then they keep working against a transfer that's
maybe a little too dry. And that you're going
to end up pulling up some of the toner. Then I'm just
coming in here with my wet paper towel to try to get a little more
of that paper off or they're circular motion
tends to work pretty well. I can see I had a few skipped
areas here and there. Especially on the edges. Edges are a little
bit hard to get. But due to the nature
of this image and the fact that it's an old old building with
an old brick wall. I'm not going to worry
about it too much. It kind of plays into the
look of the whole thing. So I've got the
image transfer done. Now I'm going to need
to let this dry up for a few minutes
before I use it in. I want any of the
moisture that's left in the little bit of
paper that's on there. And the toner to absolutely
come out of there. We don't want to fuse anything
wet into the surface. It will end up leaving little
like pock marks in there. So we'll let this sit for just a couple of minutes
and then we'll come back. Now that our image transfer has had some time to sit and dry, you can see there's
a little bit of fuzziness and haziness
to the surface. That's the little bit of
paper that is left behind. I could go back with
some more water, try to get a little more
of that paper off of there and then let it dry
again before fusing it in. You want to get as much
paper off as possible, but not so much that you end up pulling up part of the image. So it is always going to
be this fine balance of maybe I'll just let the
rest of that paper be all, fuse it into the surface
and then continue working. Obviously, the more
paper you can get off the surface of
it that you're not fusing in the smoother
surface you're going to have at the end for
additional things like hand coloring and painting and
all of that sort of thing. So I've got my heat gun and I've gotta be
fairly careful here. These, these images can
move around pretty quickly. It is just a matter of, there's the little bit of toner sitting on top of the wax. So I'm going to come through and I'm going to gently Fuse. And I know I'm
going to have to do this in multiple passes. And so you've got to keep
an eye on your image. I'm just sort of
pre-warming it here. And then I'll come back and work each section until
that paper is gone. So you're going to see, as you're fusing, all of a
sudden in the blink of an eye, it's going to go
from white and hazy looking with that paper pole to that web starting to melt and come up into that paper
pulp and disappear. So the minute you
see that happen, move on to another
area of the image. You can always come back and
fuse a little more later. But if I overuse them, that image starts
to break apart, then I'm going to have to
either just deal with that or come back and try to
patch some areas back in. If I think I have a
little more fusing to do, but i've I've been at
it for a few moments. I'm gonna go ahead and let
this sort of set up a little bit and then I'll come back in and give it another
pass with the heat. The meantime, I've
got a few little extra bits of paper here. I think that I can
get off the surface. They're still little Pick
tool come in here and try to get them out of there
rather than fuse them in. And then we'll just give
it one more quick pass. And then we can decide what's
the next step on this. This image is well fused in. I can let the setup for a
few minutes and then decide, do I want to do some oil
paint on the surface? Do I want to hand color? Do I want to go in
with a little bit of encaustic paint and continue
to edit the surface.
5. Fusing transfers: So now that our image transfer has had some time
to sit and dry, you can see there's
a little bit of fuzziness and haziness
to the surface. That's the little bit of
paper that is left behind. I could go back with
some more water, try to get a little more
of that paper off of there and then let it dry
again before fusing it in. You want to get as much
paper off as possible, but not so much that you end up pulling up part of the image. So it is always going to
be this fine balance of maybe I'll just let the
rest of that paper be all, fuse it into the surface
and then continue working. Obviously, the more
paper you can get off the surface of
it that you're not fusing in the smoother
surface you're going to have at the end for
additional things like hand coloring and painting and
all of that sort of thing. So I've got my heat gun and I've gotta be
fairly careful here. These, these images can
move around pretty quickly. It is just a matter of, there's the little bit of toner sitting on top of the wax. So I'm going to come through and I'm going to gently Fuse. And I know I'm
going to have to do this in multiple passes. So you've got to keep
an eye on your image. I'm just sort of
pre-warming it here. And then I'll come back and work each section until
that paper is gone. So you're going to see, as you're fusing, all of a
sudden in the blink of an eye, it's gonna go from
weight and hazy looking with that paper pole to that web starting to melt and come up into that paper
pulp and disappear. So the minute you
see that happen, move on to another
area of the image. You can always come back and
fuse a little more later. But if I overuse in that
image starts to break apart, then I'm going to have to
either just deal with that or come back and try to
patch some areas back in. If I think I have a
little more fusing to do, but i've I've been at
it for a few moments. I'm gonna go ahead and let
this sort of set up a little bit and then I'll come back in and give it another
pass with the heat. In the meantime, I've
got a few little extra bits of paper here. I think that I can
get off the surface. They're still little Pick
tool come in here and try to get them out of there
rather than fuse them in. And then we'll just give
it one more quick pass. And then we can decide what's
the next step on this. This image is well fused in. I can let the setup for a
few minutes and then decide, do I want to do some oil
paint on the surface? You I want to hand color. Do I want to go in
with a little bit of encaustic paint and continue
to edit the surface.
6. Hand coloring photo transfer: Once again, I'm going to rely on my neo color
water-soluble wax pastels in order to be able to
hand color the surface. Same thing as we talked
about on prior videos. As far as this surface
needs to be backed down too coolish temp in order for me to get that really clean, pristine surface and not
gouge into it with the CRAN. So I've set this aside for some time and allowed
it to cool down. And now I'm gonna go in and
start to add some color. Certainly in areas where
I don't have much toner, I'm going to get the
color showing up better. These are also great. If you have an area that maybe the toner sort of didn't take, or you have some missed areas. I can come back in here and draw those details back in and
patch things back in. So few little
missing spots here, I want my railing to stick
out a little bit more, so come in and color over that. Brings in the color. Cooler sitting on
a porch. Mixture. If you're blending lots
of different colors together or jumping
from color to color, you may want to wash your
hands or wipe up in-between. Sometimes you can
get some transfer, go in-between one
color or the next. I think on some
of my highlights, I really want them to stand out and be a little bit
brighter light. So I'm just going
to come in late. These are great way
to be able to spot color in some areas and touch up a few little mishaps where you may have missed
some areas of the toner. Because again, it's a
crown and I can sharpen it and get into a really
fine point areas. It's an easy way to drop in color here and there
in small areas. Again, I can blend
multiple colors together. If I think that blue is
a little too bright, I can come back in here
with a little bit darker of a color and blend them
together right on the surface. And then once again, you do need to
remember to fuse these in so that they
are set in there. You do want to be careful. Now because I don't want to overuse this and break
apart by transfer. So I'm going to fuse
a little bit and then I'll sort of back it
off and let it set up for a moment and then
come back in and do a couple couple of
other light passes. Notice I'm not overusing
the entire area again. I'm really only just
concentrating on the parts where I know
I added other material. Again, I don't want
this to get too warm, so probably would let this
sit for a few moments and then come back and give it another pass or two
with the heat gun.
7. Painting on top of a photo transfer: Another way that you
can bring color into this is by doing washes
of the encaustic paint. So we're going to want very, very thin coats of
color that we can go ahead and do a wash of
color over the surface. I'm going to go ahead now. This has been
sitting for a while. You a slightly
rewarm my surface so that my paint flows
a little smoother. And then for this, I
really want to work with thinned out bits of paint. So it's gonna be mostly medium. And then just a little bit of color in here so that I've got some really translucent colors. I never well working with an image transfer that I
am painting on top of. If I'm wanting to add
color in the mix, I am always going to do
a indirect views method. I'm never going to want to work with anything
where I'm actually touching the surface of the piece with my
using implements, meaning a tacking iron
or anything like that. Because otherwise
I do run the risk of breaking apart that image. Basically, I'm just
at this point using some paint that was already
in my brush and adding a little bit more medium
to it so that I really can have some thinned
out bits of color. So that I'm still able to see the details of the transfer
through the paint. These areas here
that were skipped a little bit that I
didn't do a great job. This is a good place to wash some color over the top of it. So that it looks a little
bit more purposeful. Here with a little
bit stronger pigment, little, little less washed out. Bring some of these
highlights back in the texture in here. Then I do have to remember to
fuse all of this detail in. Same thing, if I've
laid some paint down, maybe I feel it was a little
too much or that I don't like feel like it's a little
bit contrived looking here, I'm going to come in with
my pottery loop before I use my paint and I'm going
to very lightly scrape it. I have to be incredibly
careful here because there is no layer of paint between the colors that I've just laid down
and the transfer. I did not put down any medium. If I wanted to be extra
safe with this and make sure that I don't scrape up
anything that's important. I probably would want
to have done a coat of medium over my transfer before
I went in with any paint. That's a good way to ensure it. So it's a way to buy herself a little bit of
leeway on workspace until you're really comfortable with the tools and knowing how much pressure to apply
and things like that. Okay. I think that's
got that pretty much where I want the yellow. And I'm gonna go ahead and very, very lightly fuse this in, and then this will be done. So you can see here
from my two transfers, I've added color
to both of them. But one at the top is going
to be the one that we used the wax pastels
to add color. And then this one here
is the one that we painted on within caustic pain. And what was some
similar colors on both. So you can sort of
compare and contrast the difference of how much
detail you can see through. But I definitely have some
very washed out colors here. But I have a little bit more almost blocked
genus to the piece. I can tell that there's been some material added to the top. Whereas using the
water-soluble wax pastels to hand color your image, you're gonna get a
much flatter color. You're not going to be adding dimension in detail
to the image. So it just depends on what you have in your studio
and what overall what you are trying to go for on your finished piece to see which method of coloring
you want to use here. I also could go in with a
little bit of the oil stick. And he was very, very little to rub it and tint the surface. That's another good
way to bring in transparent color as well.
8. Image transfers project: For this final class project, I would like you to try a couple of different
image transfers. First, start with
something simple, like a black and
white line drawing, something you would think
of as like pen and ink. A transfer with that
higher contrast that we'll have simple lines and not
a lot of tonal gradation is going to give you a
really good idea if you've managed to get the
concepts of getting the transfer down from there, work on something that is
photographic and nature. And play with your image editing
software to see just how much you have to change the tonal range to
get a good transfer. Again, I find
something that is of a higher contrast and does not have a great deal of mid tones. To give me the best
transfer as possible. Think about empty
branches against the sky. Think of that light to dark. That will give you a very
clean photo transfer. Also, don't forget
to flip your images. You need to print your
images in reverse in order to have them be right reading when
you transfer them. Best of luck, don't
forget to post your finished pieces in the project and
resources section. So now that our image transfer has had some time
to sit and drive, you can see there's
a little bit of fuzziness and haziness
to the surface. That's the little bit of
paper that is left behind. I could go back with
some more water, try to get a little more
of that paper off of there and then let it dry
again before fusing it in. You want to get as much
paper off as possible, but not so much that you end up pulling up part of the image. So it is always gonna
be this fine balance of maybe I'll just let the
rest of that paper be all, fuse it into the surface
and then continue working. Obviously, the more
paper you can get off the surface of
it that you're not fusing in the smoother
surface you're going to have at the end for
additional things like hand coloring and painting and
all of that sort of thing. So I've got my heat gun and I've gotta be
fairly careful here. These, these images can
move around pretty quickly. It is just a matter of, There's the little bit of toner sitting on top of the wax. So I'm going to come through and I'm going to gently Fuse. And I know I'm
going to have to do this in multiple passes. And so you've got to keep
an eye on your image. I've just sort of
pre-warming it here. And then I'll come back and work each section until
that paper is gone. You're going to see,
as you're fusing, all of a sudden in
the blink of an eye, it's going to go from white, hazy looking with that paper
pull to that wet starting to melt and come up into that
paper pulp and disappear. So the minute you
see that happen, move on to another
area of the image. You can always come back and
fuse a little more later. But if I overviews on that
image starts to break apart, then I'm going to have to
either just deal with that or come back and try to
patch some areas back in. If I think I have a
little more fusing to do, but i've I've been at
it for a few moments. I'm gonna go ahead and
let this sort of set up a little bit and
then I'll come back in and give it another
pass with the heat. In the meantime, I've
got a few little extra bits of paper here. I think that I can
get off the surface. They're still little Pick
tool come in here and try to get them out of there
rather than fuse them in. Then we'll just give it
one more quick pass. And then we can decide what's
the next step on this. This image as well fused in. I can let the setup for a
few minutes and then decide, do I want to do some oil
paint on the surface? Do I want to hand color? Do I want to go in
with a little bit of encaustic paint and continue
to edit the surface.
Sarah Rehmer
