Encaustics

Encaustic painting has been around for centuries.  The ancient Greeks used encaustics for portrait painting and for adding color to sculptures.  This method of painting consists of using molten wax combined with pigment.  When hot, the wax pigments are fluid and can be used similarly to oil or acrylic paint.  The term, encaustic, comes from the ancient Greek “enkaustikos”, which means to heat or burn and signifies the procedure of fusing the layers of paint with a heating element to bind them to the painting surface and to each other. See the Fayum portraits for examples of ancient encaustic paintings.