Art Studio Ventilation for Encaustic Painting-Tips from R & F Paints

I finally got back to experimenting with encaustic painting.  Knowing that I needed to improve my ventilation for safety, I started reading and found a good article from R & F Paints that describes a simple way to ventilate your studio and different kinds of ventilation.    For their full article on studio ventilation go to their link: R & F Encaustic Technical Sheets  Then click on "Venting Your Studio for Encaustics" which will take you to a pdf file.

Their recommendation for placement of two fans is the one I am starting with now.  When winter comes, I may need to buy an exhaust fan with louvers to keep cold air out of my studio when I am not using the fan.  But for now I will see how using a pair of  simple box fans will work.  The first fan is in the window six inches above my electric palette.  On the other side of the room I placed a fan on a table to blow air over the palette which will blow the fumes into the exhaust fan and out the window.  This system should also be an improvement in my studio ventilation when just working with oils and not heated wax.

First Tomato

6 x 6" oil on panel

This was our first tomato of the year ( a late tomato) which I decided deserved to be the subject of a painting.  I thew in some of our green basil from the garden  as a color compliment to the redness of the tomato.  Just having fun with the plasticity of the oil paint and striving for subtle color variations in the white table to add interest to the simplicity of the composition.

Empty House

10" x 10" oil on Panel

This is part of a series of paintings about empty buildings.  Recently I went back to this old house in Mystic CT and it was smoldering embers, guess someone burned it down.   The day I took reference photos, the light was casting strong shadows and there was a lot of warmth in the colors of the house.  Of course I took some liberties to push the value contrast and the house color to an intense warm red/orange against warm and cool lights.