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 differently in the end...

It has another layer of shellac which then moved around more than I planned on the molten wax. I then wanted to build up some texture over it and use surface colour to contrast with the colours below the surface.

Like most things - it was neither a success or a failure, but a journey.

So, if you've read this far, you have, by accident or design, joined me at the point where I decided to start trying to put my art journey online, specifically my painting with fire obsession.