While it’s been bitterly cold and snowing like crazy outside this past week, I stayed warm beside my griddle palette and kept busy creating new encaustic mixed media paintings in the studio. As much as I dislike the frigid temperature, winter is the best season for me to work with encaustics – and I’ve come to love that odd sensation I get when cold air from the open window mixes with the warm heat emanating from the griddle. (I have to open the window for ventilation.)

A lot of you have been curious about the process and setup involved with working with encaustics – so while I was waiting for some fused on wax to cool down, I took some snapshots so you can take a look (more of a peek really) at what’s on my worktable.

Here are some brushes that are kept warm on the griddle which I use as my palette and where I melt my wax. I use tin cans to hold melted wax, but I often mix colors straight on the griddle surface – which is sometimes a challenge because the surface is black so it’s hard to see the color straightaway.

Here you can see one of the paintings that I was working on. I have several pottery tools that I use for scraping off wax. And I line my work surface with freezer paper to keep the table clean.

Here are some natural dry pigments I use to color the wax. (Of course, I keep the jars tightly closed and only opened them like this to show you the gorgeous colors.)

I’ve also started filming for some online workshops that I’ll be offering soon. I’m really excited about that and deathly nervous since videos are way out of my comfort zone.

And I’m doing all these while I continue to homeschool my lovely youngest daughter who is growing up to be very witty and smart like her sister. (No wonder I drink a lot of coffee!)

How about you? What keeps you busy this winter?