I’m just going down to the shed to set fire to my painting.
'Just going down the shed to set fire to my painting,' as the words left my lips I realised I was simply happy. It didn’t matter that nobody saw it, nobody bought it, nobody thanked me. There was just something about setting fire to a painting that gave me a sense of unpredictable satisfaction. So what exactly was I doing? Dry shellac burn : I’ve got a small cradled panel with several layers of encaustic medium (beeswax mixed with damar resin) I have been painted over these with alcohol inks. I’ve covered the dry Alcohol Inks with shellac and left it to dry overnight. With my favourite new toy, the baby blowtorch, I heated the surface and produced coloured cells. To be honest the wet shellac burn was more fun as the flames were better (the alcohol set fire and burned off) but the dry one gave much bigger clearer cells and I’m starting to get the look I was after. Of course, having got the look I was after, I then overworked it with several other ideas and it turned out rather