Encaustic Portrait of Nefertiti

Portrait of Nefertiti - Encaustic painting by Vladimir London

In this video, you will see the complete process of making a portrait in hot-beeswax encaustic. Here's the finished artwork and encaustic paints used for making it. This painting will be done on the bamboo panel. It is about 15 millimeters thick and its front and sides are covered with glued and primed canvas. For the ground, I will use a mixture of white chalk and organic glue. This chalky ground is heated up to about 70 degrees. I apply it with a one-inch flat synthetic brush. There will be several thin coats of the ground. Each coat has to be fully dry before applying the next one. I will dry it overnight. After drying, the panel surface should be lightly rubbed with sandpaper to smooth it up. The direction of brushstrokes is perpendicular to each other in different coats. This helps to seal small pores of the chalky ground. White chalk is semi-transparent when wet, but with each layer it gets more opaque. It will become very white when dry.

This panel is now ready for drawing. It is rigid and smooth. To preserve its whiteness, I will transfer the design using tracing paper. This will help to avoid erasing and redrawing, spoiling the surface. I want to keep it as clean as possible because encaustic is a transparent medium. The tracing paper cartoon is fixed to the board at one side with masking tape. Such fixing allows flipping the sheet over to see the transfer process. All I need to do now is to outline this drawing once again. I will do it with a thin graphite pencil. I skipped the step of making a preparatory drawing, but if you want to learn portraiture, check out my book "How to draw a portrait in the three-quarters view". It is available on Amazon.

Also, the best way of learning how to draw portraits and figures is by watching video lessons from the Life Drawing Academy Online Course. The drawing is almost complete; I will add a few details in pencil directly on the panel.

Last year, I visited the Egyptian Museum of Berlin, where I saw the Nefertiti bust. Although I made several sketches of this bust at the museum from life, this drawing is not a copy, but my interpretation of her appearance.

It's time to make an underpainting. I will do it in cold wax paints, called Ceracolors. These waterborne wax paints are made of emulsified beeswax and other ingredients. Ceracolors are developed by George O'Hanlon, the technical director of Natural Pigments.

This medium is unique. A special formula makes beeswax soluble in water, so it is very easy to work with these paints. I will select some synthetic brushes for painting. A white porcelain palette is needed for paint mixing. I will also use the Ceracolors Fluid Medium, which has exactly the same binder as paints. I love Ceracolors; these paints are really versatile. A very thin and diluted coat of paint can be applied as if you work in watercolor. It is also possible to apply thick impasto paint layers. For this purpose, there are special Ceracolors mediums and pastes.

I will start this underpainting in blue color. Ultramarine blue paint is mixed with water and Ceracolors Fluid Medium on the palette. Paint is mixed easily; its color is rich and saturated. The mix is very easy to apply. It grips well to the slightly absorbent chalk ground. For the underpainting purposes, I need a very thin coat of paint because I want the white color of the ground to show through this first layer of paint. This will help to achieve optical mixing of colors when the underpainting coat will be overpainted in encaustic. The ground can be moistened a bit to get smoother brushstrokes and softer transitions of tonal values. This way, the ground becomes less absorbent and a tiny amount of paint goes a long way. For now, I will only use one blue paint and add other colors later. Because Ceracolors are water-soluble, they will dry as fast as water evaporates. However, during some time it would be possible to reopen almost dried paint by diluting it with water. After some time, the paint layer will become non-soluble. This is when this underpainting will be ready for encaustic overpainting. I paint in very thin transparent layers. It is easier to preserve transparency when building up layers, increasing saturation step by step.

The monochrome blue underpainting is technically suitable for the purpose of under-layer, but I will add several more colors to make it polychrome. Once again, new colors are applied in very diluted and transparent layers. This technique is called glazing. Ceracolors come out of tubes as a highly saturated paste and it is perfectly possible to paint in this medium the same way as oil or acrylic painting. However, the aim here is different. This will be an encaustic artwork, so I do not need a thick layer of cold-wax paint underneath. All I want from this exercise is to establish main tonal values and give some color scheme to this picture. When Ceracolors paints are mixed with titanium white, they become more opaque because this pigment is rather strong. Nevertheless, I continue painting in thin layers to keep this underpainting as a preparatory step, not as a finished artwork. The way I apply different coats of paint follows the same traditions as developed by the Old Masters. This is the indirect method of optical mixing of colors when the final result will depend not on hues mixed on a palette, but on light that penetrates through multiple layers of paint and reflects back from the white ground.

Now, it's time to continue in hot encaustic. Here are DIY encaustic paints done to my recipe. There are about 300 of them. I prepared numerous tints and shades, which allows me to pick up any color I need without mixing it on a palette while I paint. To obtain these paints, the beeswax and resin medium was mixed with dry powder Rublev brand pigments. These pigments are available from Natural Pigments dot com, run by George O'Hanlon and Tatiana Zaytseva, who visited me in my summer studio in Europe last year. Their art materials are produced to the highest standards, which makes it one of my favorite brands. The range of paints and other art materials at Natural Pigments is huge and can satisfy every need any fine artist might have.

Here's a very special Vladimir London Hot Encaustic Bristle Brush™. It is small, light and powerful. Its temperature can be adjusted from 50 to 500 degrees Celsius at one degree increment. This is the sixth generation of encaustic brushes designed by me. It makes the process of hot beeswax painting very simple. I take a paint block, heat a small amount of encaustic with the brush, and apply paint on the panel surface. Bit by bit, beeswax paint covers the surface, building up the thickness of the encaustic layer. The hot brush burns-in this wax medium and no extra heating is needed. However, to smooth up the brushstrokes, I can heat the surface with the hot air gun. This fuses the paint and smooths up the painting surface.

Apart from the Bristle Brush, I also designed:

• Vladimir London Cauterium™
• Vladimir London Encaustic Felt Pen™
• Vladimir London Encaustic Cartridge Brush™
• and Vladimir London Encaustic Ballpoint Pen™

Each tool is based on the same heating pen, but has a different working tip. The width of brushes varies from one millimeter to one inch, which covers all the needs for small easel artworks. I will describe in detail my unique encaustic brushes in a separate video.

I tend to work with small size brushes to get finer details and achieve better precision. Because no mixing palette is needed, it makes the painting process very economical. A small amount of paint will go a long way. No paint is wasted and the paint block can be used to the last drop.

A wide range of tints allows making smooth transitions between hues and values. Different paints are fused together directly on the panel surface. Encaustic is a very interesting medium. To become liquid, this paint requires heat. Beeswax is specially modified with resins, so its melting point is raised up to about 80 degrees. Resins also make this medium harder, glossier, and more transparent.

Inspired by ancient art, I also made this small sculpture of the Egyptian princess head. It has wonderful stylisation of eyebrows and eyelashes. Making sculptures really helps with painting because I can see three-dimensional shapes in real life.

Painting in encaustic can be very challenging. This medium solidifies very quickly after touching the cold panel. It actually takes under three seconds for a small drop of encaustic paint to become solid. However, this feature is also the main advantage of encaustic. Beeswax paints can be easily melted when needed, so they are always ready for repainting. Because the under-layer was painted in the cold wax medium, it is well suited for encaustic overpainting. The top hot wax coat melts the under-layer, permanently fusing these two layers together. The adhesion of beeswax paints is superior to oil or acrylic paints and therefore encaustic artworks will last forever without flaking off. Also, because beeswax is flexible to some extent, there is no risk of cracking over time, as long as the support remains rigid and undamaged. And finally, beeswax protects pigments from fading and the encaustic medium does not yellow or change its color as years pass by. This makes it perfect for making long lasting works of art that will withstand the test of time without darkening or fading. With proper storage, encaustic artworks will last for millennia. We know it because in the art museums around the world we can see examples of Fayum portraits that were painted in Egypt two millennia ago. These portraits bring us a snapshot of ancient times when artists knew how to use beeswax for painting. Encaustic painting techniques were almost forgotten since then, but with development of new tools and reinvention of recipes, it became possible to bring this wonderful medium back to life. There are still many questions about how ancient Greek artists, who invented this painting medium more than two thousand years ago, actually used it for painting. Solving these challenges and inventing new ways of encaustic painting is a very exciting undertaking. I want to put my input into reviving this ancient art.

This encaustic painting is almost complete. The process is quite slow, but not much slower than oil painting. However, unlike with oil paints, encaustic dries or rather solidifies very quickly and I can apply another layer without waiting for days or even weeks for under-layers to dry. There is a very organic feel to this medium. It looks attractive and has some depth and lustre.

With the portrait complete, I will now treat the back side of this panel with ganosis. The encaustic medium is heated and can be applied with a flat brush. I will also use the hot air gun to spread this medium on the panel surface. A very thin coat of ganosis is required here. The bamboo panel will absorb some wax and the rest could be wiped off with a linen cloth. When the coat is cold and solid, I buff it up with a soft microfiber cloth. This treatment protects the surface, making it water-resistant and buffing makes it shiny. Here is the finished Nefertiti portrait painting. It is slightly reflective and I will polish the encaustic surface with a soft cloth. This will add depth and enhance saturation of colors. Here it is. The surface is bright and shiny, the colors are vivid and transparency makes this artwork even more attractive.

This painting, together with the sculpted princess head was gifted to the directors of Natural Pigments. Thank you, George and Tatiana for making great paints and answering questions about art materials.

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