Encaustic – Page 8 – Enneagram and Encaustic

Sixth Station: Veronica wipes the face of Jesus

Fifth Station: Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus carry His cross

Fourth Station: Jesus meets His Blessed Mother

The vibrancy of this rose won’t last as the plant still has trapped moisture. When it dries with time the rose will fade and crack. I’m dissatisfied to present this as a metaphor for Mary, but creating a piece in one week is the parameter I set at the start of Lent. We’ll see where this WIP ends up.

Third Station: Jesus falls the first time

Second Station: Jesus carries His cross

First Station: Jesus is condemned to death

I’ve decided that my Lenten observance this year will be encaustic paintings of the Stations of the Cross. Every Friday I will post a piece I started at the beginning of the week, contemplating on the Mystery. These will be WIPs that I will continue to develop throughout Lent. On Good Friday I’ll post an update on where the pieces finished.

Or, at least, that’s the plan now, at the beginning of Lent. Sometimes (well, every year, actually) what I think Lent will be and what Lent ends up being are different things.

Ash Wednesday, 2022

This is a WIP, a devotional of Our Lady using rose petals surrounding a high school portrait of my mother. (The great artists all portrayed Mary as the most beautiful woman they could imagine, so I’m allowed to use Mom.) In the spirit of the beginning of Lent, this piece is unfinished. In Holy Week I’ll post the update and we’ll see where the journey took me.

Farewell to Gazes

My beloved main toon on the PS EU server, Gazes-at-Shoes, is retiring. Because of technical issues, I no longer play The Elder Scrolls Online on PlayStation, only on PC. She looks somewhat fierce here, but she was always a sweetheart and a joy to game. My new toon wouldn’t be half as fun if I hadn’t learned it all first with Gazes.

No Bonnie waits to take my toy. The digital world, imbued with just as many tea parties and heroic adventures as Andy’s room, isn’t suited for introducing a plaything to the next generation. My first Barbie doll in the early 1970s would look, except for cosmetic differences, like a Barbie of today. Gaming moves too fast, though, for that. Not only do hardware and programming advance, but human reflexes and multi-tasking abilities become more sophisticated. I like the next shiny as much as anyone. Therefore, my girl is gone, an old file in a junked console. The friends I made through her, real people inhabiting a virtual screen, are left behind, too.

Lol, well, this turned into more of an elegy than I expected! Gazes lives in the cloud, so any time I renew my subscriptions and find a PlayStation with the proper software, I can see her again. It won’t happen, though. I’ve moved on.

King Thrushbeard

Not my favorite fairy tale, but I was inspired by the princess carrying food scraps around in jars tied inside her dress pockets.

The wood bead accents are from — shocker — a repurposed piece I never posted here. The plastic dome is something I found at the granddaddy of crafting needs (Hobby Lobby, lol) and added specifically for this idea.

Mum over Hibiscus

Another entry in the Mum series, lol! This is, naturally, a repurpose of this. The original piece, like all of my earlier organic art, dried to dust and faded away. I fear that the photo, with all the rich color, is not what the art looks like on the wall. My small pieces like this show much darker and disappear on display. I’ve found that a great way to appreciate these little morsels is to use the photo as phone or computer wallpaper. The detail is magnified. With my permission, please try it! I’ll let you know when I become famous enough to rescind the offer and charge for the screen grab. Hahaha!