A Piece of Me#58, underdrawing in pen and ink.

A Piece of Me #58, encaustic over pastiglia on panel. 21 x 13.3 cm or 8 1/4 x 5 1/4 in.

Ah, one of my favourite spontaneous compositions: the cigarette butt. I remember when I first started laying out the design for this panel, I had to ask myself, what is that? When I realised it was a cigarette butt I had to laugh. Who knew?

It turned out that the treatment for this panel called for pastiglia. Ha! So I had the opportunity to sculpt this inconspicuous little guy, wondering how that 3D element would play into the final assemblage.

Then I realised that the painting method was encaustic, which is a bit of a double whammy, since the burning-in (the melting in) phase can enhance any substrate dimensionality. Which it did. The paint receded just slightly around the form, accentuating it. No harm. No foul.

Otherwise, the painting consisted of three planes of reduced earth colors, accentuated by a few strong accents of almost-black. Like the panel from yesterday, it was another foreground piece, so I felt could afford the strong accents.

Two hours of work. One and done. Technical write up of using encaustic for an indirect painting technique here.