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Suzanne Truman's Encaustic Process...
According to Ralph Meyer’s excerpt in The Artist's Handbook, his traditional encaustic description states, "Encaustic or hot wax painting comes down to us from ancient Greece where it was a major creative art process for both easel and mural painting. It is perhaps the earliest formal easel-painting method, and it shares with the ancient process of fresco a certain fundamental purity.
Its use was displaced by other mediums with the developing and changing requirements of European art so that during the medieval and Renaissance periods it was a genuine lost art. During the eighteenth century, mural painters sought a new material that would give permanent results under drastic conditions, especially dampness; wax seemed to fill these requirements and the reputed excellence of the ancient Greek process offered a goal to artists and scholars; and so, by means of literary research, a revival of encaustic began. This work, which continued through the nineteenth century, is well documented, and today we have not only the ancient sources but also 200 years of records to guide us in our current revival.
The classic encaustic method consists of painting on any ground or surface with paints made by mixing dry pigments with molten refined beeswax plus a variable percentage of resin (usually dammar varnish), working from a warm palette. Warming and chilling the surface can also assist the brush or palette knife manipulations. A final heat treatment, or burning in (which is the meaning of the name encaustic) by passing a heat source over the surface, fuses and bonds the painting into a permanent form without altering it, and a light polishing with soft cotton brings out a satiny sheen. When cool, the picture is finished; no further change ever takes place."