Raw Ingredients
It takes seven kilos of honey to produce one kilo of beeswax. I source my wax locally from the beekeeper next door. Bill uses solar-filtering to extract the wax. It is usually a creamy, honey-yellow hue from the citrus and natives in the 2 kilometre area the bees have been pollinating.
I use a mix of 15% Damar Resin when making my encaustic medium. Damar is a hard natural resin that comes from deciduous conifer trees. I use this ingredient for hardening the beeswax and raising its melting temperature. This is what allows the amazing wax surface to be buffed to a high, translucent shine.
Shellac is another type of resin I use in a lot of my works, especially my sculptures. This resin is secreted by the female lac bug on trees in the forests of India and Thailand. I paint it on the surface of my pieces and when I add fire it causes reticulation - the beautiful interlacing lines resembling a net.
