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What Substrates Do I Use for Wax Painting?
We typically recommend you use substrates that are absorbent and rigid such as wood panels and masonite (fiber board). However, many of today’s artists are working on museum board and 300lb watercolor papers as well. Since artists are experimenting all the time, we’ve actually discovered that many artists are even using lightweight watercolor and printmaking papers. Artists that work in thin layers or who do encaustic monoprints are working on very thin, almost transparent (yet strong) Japanese rice papers. So it seems that it is key that substrates are absorbent. This even includes cotton canvas mounted to a board, unglazed ceramic, and low-fired bisqueware. So you can see, there are plenty of options available to artists when it comes to choosing a substrate. Keep in mind of course, that using a traditional gesso made from rabbit skin glue and precipitated chalk will provide a nice absorbent surface to work on while acrylic based gesso is not compatible with the encaustic process. Wax paint simply will not bond to the acrylic polymer and the wax paint could flake off the substrate. This is more likely to happen when the artwork is transported from a hot region to a cold region and vice versa. The best way to determine whether a substrate is suitable for encaustic is by doing "The Freezer Test".
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