Wax Resources

My cold wax medium recipes:

  1. 3 parts beeswax to 4 parts Gamsol (volume, not weight) Dissolve overnight in glass jar, no heating necessary.
  2. Add 10-20% carnauba wax (volume of beeswax) for harder mix. Wax must be melted and mixed with solvent while hot.
  3. Beeswax + 10-20% resin (of wax volume). Wax/solvent ratio 2:3. Hot mix.

Recipes may change as I see the finished surface of my paintings over time. I’ve tried an oil mix and frankly hated it so much I threw it away. So greasy and taking forever to dry, might as well just paint with straight oil colours.

Last updated June 26 2018

Notes:

Quote: As I understand things, you can only dissolve Damar, Copal and other resin(crystals) with Turpentine. You can clean a brush with OMS (Gamsol) that you’ve been using with the mediums made from one of the resins to paint with though. But to make a medium with one of them, pure Gum Turpentine is required.

Above hot mixe #3 DOES soften after a couple of weeks and could probably be mushed into a workable solution.

Another cold solution: Dissolve dammar crystals in turpentine and use that to dissolve the beeswax as solution #1 above. This dammar solution can also be used as varnish for oil paintings.

Biltema har en kaburatorsprit som IKKE er farvet. Den virker fint til opløsning af shellak

Preliminary temperature test: Do not store wax paintings in direct sunlight (windows) or temperatures above 35° C (40?) Hot car 30 min = surface temp of wax measured 60° C and was definitely sticky to the touch (one encaustic, one cwm+oil). They cooled quickly to 30° in the shade but especially the encaustic surface (which was newer and had no paint added) remained sticky for a while.

Last updated July 09 2018

Links:

My own blog posts on the subject

Last updated June 26 2018

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Last updated June 28 2018

Books:

Last updated July 02 2018

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