What is Cold Wax Painting?

I get a lot of questions about cold wax. Makes sense. Despite being a technique used by Rembrant and believed to be in use in ancient Egypt, it feels pretty new. Contemporary artists have discovered cold wax and are exploring many creative ways to integrate it into their work. 

The image below might be hard to read.... so here is some information.

What is Cold Wax Painting?

Any painting that heavily utilizes Cold Wax Medium into oil colors is a cold wax painting. Not quite oil painting or encaustic painting. Cold Wax Painting can be used in ALL types of painting styles, including landscape, abstract, still life.... anything from realism or abstraction, Experimentation, texture and the physicality of paint layers is the what I love most about working with cold wax.

What is Cold Wax Medium?

According to Gamblin.com, Cold Wax Medium a mixture of natural beeswax, solvent and alkyd resin. The term “cold” in Cold Wax Medium and Cold Wax Painting refers to the fact that heat is not required for working with this wax medium – as it dries by solvent evaporation, rather than the cooling of the wax, as in encaustic painting. As the solvent evaporates, the soft wax hardens to the density of a beeswax candle.

Cold Wax Painting Techniques

Cold Wax medium is a dense paste, and lends itself to creating textures within a painting and allows for expressive brushmarks and the ability to carve into paint layers with palette knives. Cold Wax also gives oil colors a beautiful translucent quality, layered lightly working with transparent paints, a seductive surface similar to encaustic paintings can be achieved.