Technique and Play

From Grattage to Gilding: The Language of Layered Expression

Encaustic painting is never static. It shifts, breathes, and moves with you. Unlike oil or acrylic, which solidify into stillness, encaustic remains open, mutable, like warm skin that remembers being touched.

It is both medium and muse.

To work with encaustic is to speak in layers, each one semi-translucent, each one an opportunity to hide or reveal. It invites both discipline and improvisation, both precision and play. The more you push it, the more it shows you who you are.

The Tools of Expression: More Than Just Paint

Encaustic is uniquely suited for mixed media because it can encase, fuse, and suspend. The wax binds elements together while remaining translucent enough to allow for optical layering.

Here are just a few of the techniques that make encaustic so texturally rich:

• Collage:
  Embed paper, fabric, or thread directly into the wax. The medium bonds and preserves, creating layered narratives.¹

• Frottage:
  Rubbing textured surfaces with wax layers to reveal hidden forms or ghostly impressions.²

• Grattage:
  Scraping or carving into dried wax to reveal underlying colors or add topographical detail.³

• Image Transfers:
  Use photocopies or laser prints to transfer ink into the wax, producing ghostlike silhouettes and textural residue.⁴

• Object Embedding:
  Glass, metal, bones, dried botanicals—encaustic can hold it all, transforming everyday materials into artifacts.

• Gilding and Shellac Burn:
  Add shimmer and controlled chaos with gold leaf or flammable shellac. A heat gun or torch ignites the shellac, creating fractal textures and scorched veils of light.⁵

Each method speaks a different dialect of texture. You’re not just painting. You’re excavating, layering, inscribing.

Fusing: The Ritual of Breath and Flame

Fusing—the act of re-melting the wax between layers—is the heartbeat of encaustic. Without it, your piece won’t hold. But it’s more than a mechanical step. It’s ritualistic.

The heat gun hisses. The wax shimmers. Layers seal into each other like sediment pressed by time.

• Light fusing = ethereal transitions

• Heavy fusing = bold merges, river-like bleed

You begin to read the flame like a calligrapher reads ink: pressure, pause, flow.

Encaustic Is Alive

Encaustic painting is alive. It moves with temperature. It absorbs light. It shifts as it cures. Like skin, it glosses over time, revealing subtleties you didn’t notice the day before.

This quality, this sense of being in motion, makes it feel more like collaboration than control.

The medium doesn’t just obey; it responds.

It lets you start again. Scrape back. Melt away. Push forward.

Spontaneous, Eternal

Because of its forgiving nature, encaustic is deeply spontaneous. You can change direction mid-process, work wet or dry, thick or thin. But once it’s fused and cured, it’s incredibly archival.⁶

There is no other medium that balances impermanence and permanence so elegantly.

“It’s like painting with fossilized breath. Ancient, mutable, and luminous.”

Footnotes

1. R&F Handmade Paints. “Collage Techniques in Encaustic.” Technical Resource Library.

2. Mattera, Joanne. The Art of Encaustic Painting, Watson-Guptill, 2001.

3. Enkaustikos. “Advanced Techniques: Grattage and Texture.”

4. Anderson, Daniella Woolf. “The Encaustic Studio: A Wax Workshop in Mixed-Media Art,” Interweave Press, 2011.

5. Jasper, Ruth. “Shellac Burn Techniques for Encaustic.” International Encaustic Artists Journal, Vol. 6.

6. Eastaugh, Nicholas et al. Pigment Compendium, Routledge, 2008. Wax is naturally hydrophobic and resistant to mold, oxidation, and decay.