cold wax in the heat is a different substance entirely
We've had three weeks now where the studio hits 32° by noon. I can't open the skylight without letting in the construction dust from the building next door, so I've been working with the door propped and a fan that just moves the hot air around.
The cold wax medium behaves completely differently. It's soft before you even put it on the palette. The layers that should take three days to set are still tacky after a week. I had a piece I was building up, white over warm grey, and I went to scrape back and the whole top layer came off like butter. Ruined it. Or maybe it's a different painting now, I don't know yet.
I've been mixing the wax a little stiffer to compensate but then it drags on the knife and I lose the gesture I want. There's no solution, really. You just adapt and the work becomes what the weather lets it be.
What I actually mean is: I hate summer in the studio but I also kind of need it, because the winter work comes out too controlled and I don't realise that until July shows me what I was missing.
2
3commentsSaveFollow threadShare
Heat does that to oil-based mediums. It's not just soft, it's chemically different at that point, the oxidation speeds up unevenly, so you get a skin on top and soup underneath. That's what you hit when you scraped back.
If you're stuck with the heat, you could try working thinner for a while. Not glazes, just less material per pass. Or switch to something with a faster set, I've cut cold wax with a little Gamsol in weather like this. Gives you back some control without losing the body entirely.
The other option is lean into it. That butter consistency you described, if you lay it down and leave it alone for a couple weeks, you might get a surface you can't get any other way. Some of the best pieces I've seen came out of fighting the material and losing.
That's genau what happened. Skin on top, soup underneath, I didn't have the words for it but I knew I'd hit something that wasn't right.
The Gamsol idea I'll try. I've been stubborn about keeping the full body because that's the point of cold wax for me, but thirty-two degrees isn't the time for principles. How much do you cut it, roughly? A third?
The Gamsol tip is solid. I'd add, if you cut the wax with it, do it on the palette, not in the jar. Changes the whole batch if you mix it in there, and come autumn you'll wonder why your medium acts strange.
The other thing nobody mentions about heat and cold wax is how it changes the colour. The oils separate faster, so what you lay down warm dries a different value than what you mixed. I've had greys shift half a tone lighter by the next morning. You learn to mix for where it'll end up, not what it looks like going on.