After my show in April of 2012 the amount of work that my design business had increased significantly. This took up so much time I was unable to do much painting for the majority of 2012 and I’m hoping there will be more balance in 2013. Now I’m not saying I minded making enough money to pay my bills, of course that was great, but I really miss the feeling and creative outlet that I can only get from painting.

One thing I seemed to do a lot of was experiment with techniques and various tools. I was given the Bernzomatic Micro Torch kit which I have had a lot of fun with.

Here’s something I like doing with it. Melting hundreds of small spots, it takes forever on large pieces and can cause physical strain if you don’t give yourself breaks (I tend to forget breaks), but it is also somewhat meditative which I find to be the case with much of what I do with encaustic.

Micro Torch, encaustic technique detail

Convergence, encaustic and mixed media on panel, 24 x 24 x 1.5″