Cold Wax Art Medium

Molding paste is a product you can buy at an art store.

Cold wax art medium.

You apply it to the surface with a palette knife or old credit card. This is another example of using molding paste and collage on a piece of illustration board. It is a semi solid paste and requires no heat to apply or fuse layers. Cold wax gives the oil paint a creamy texture that can be spread on a painting like butter.

Cold wax medium has such distinct characteristics when mixed with oil paint that this type of painting has its own name. 16 paintings 8 comprehensive modules and approximately 40 lessons over 10 hours to guide you through your art making journey from a playful start of 16 paintings to the final stages of applying finesse and subtlety to your work to make it stellar. Cold wax speeds up drying time of oil paint and increases the paint s workability. Some brands have added resins in it.

Cold wax medium is wax that has been combined with a solvent such as turpentine or alkyd resin. See what cold wax art is all about with art making sometimes it is just best to say nothing and watch it all unfold. When mixed with solvent beeswax becomes soft enough to paint with without the need for the application of heat. Cold wax medium is a mixture of wax in a solvent.

And just as with encaustics it s best to only use cold wax on rigid supports rather than stretched canvas in order to avoid flexing and cracking. As a comparison encaustic works use heat to melt and fuse wax. It has a short characteristic and gives a clean break off of the brush or knife retaining the sharp peaks of impasto. A low odour solvent that can be easily found at any art supply store but you can also use any solvent such as mineral spirits or even rectified turpentine.

The medium is liberating for artists as new and innovative approaches are discovered pretty much every time you work in the studio. Cold wax medium is used in every style of painting from realism to pure abstraction. It can also be used as a final varnish over a dry painting. Cold wax medium is a dense paste it is excellent in creating a variety of textures within a painting.

By adding a resin for strength you create a cold wax painting medium. These working properties allow for expressive brushmarks and the ability to carve into paint layers with palette knives. Many artists combine it with oil paint. Cold wax medium is a paste that is combined with oil paint.

Gamblin s cold wax medium is a soft paste formulated to make oil colors thicker and more matte. I applied the cold wax over the collage and did quite a bit of scratching into the wax paint. It s soft enough that it s easy to mix into oil paints with a palette knife. For oil paint only 1 part wax beeswax purified beeswax or microcrystalline wax 1 part linseed oil 2 parts solvent i use taltine.