Tools Of The Trade | Part 2 Incising

In my last blog I talked about the various tools that one can use to make incisions when working with encaustic medium. There are a lot of options out there, what I am going to cover today is just a few of the different methods that you can use to fill an incision with encaustic medium. I will also address how to clean off the excess wax after filling the incision.

If you know you want to add filled incisions to your work then it is important to make sure that you prepare your surface so that the incisions will be deep enough to capture applied medium.

Before incising my lines, I let the wax cool down so that it was warm to the touch but not hot (you can use a laser temperature gauge to check the surface temp of the wax which should be about 70 - 80 degrees F). Once the surface reached the correct temperature (in order to easily and cleanly create incisions) I created incised lines using a Wood Carving Metal V-Shaped Incising Tool (SM) and the Dual Head Metal HD Incising tool. As long as there is some depth to an incision it can be filled with medium. If the incisions are shallow and or uneven in depth, then it will be more difficult to achieve an even, clean looking line, so if your objective is to create an even clear line, then make sure your incisions have some good depth.

Laser Temperature Gauge (Available On Amazon)

Wood Carving Metal V-Shaped Incising Tool (SM)

Dual Head Metal Incising Tool HD