What are cold wax mediums?

Cold wax mediums are a variety of waxes, solvents, and powders that can be used to give oil and mixed media paintings a tactile element of appeal. Oil and cold wax artists can explore with these materials if they are experiencing a creative block.

The mediums can be used to increase the workability of cold wax acrylic painting while adding body and speeding up drying. You can mix a cold wax medium acrylicwith pigments or powdered metals to create thick painting pastes. You can even use cold wax painting supplies to deliver final ‘varnishes’ to your cold wax painting acrylic artwork.

What is cold wax painting?

Let's first have a basic understanding of cold wax and cold wax mediums before moving on to how to paint with cold wax mediums. Beeswax is combined with resin and a tiny bit of solvent to create cold wax, which is a buttery soft paste used in oil painting. The cold wax typically provides body, clarity, and depth to oil paint when used with the paint on a palette.

On the other side, cold wax painting is an experimental, nearly sculptural painting style that is frequently used in conjunction with oil paint. Cold wax paintings can range in wax content from wax that is used sparingly to wax that is used extensively.

Since cold wax allows for the building up of layers, the scraping back of color, and the creation of glazes, cold wax paintings frequently have a lot of texture. Cold wax painting does not include the use of heat, unlike encaustic, another kind of wax painting.

Painting with cold wax mediums

You can use cold wax mediums, including cold wax painting with acrylics, to paint in different kinds of wonderful ways. The first step in all these ways, however, is to learn to mix your paints with your cold wax medium of choice.

The combination of cold wax and acrylic paint produces stunning impasto effects that are perfect for abstract painting and loose abstract landscapes. Your paint will be more translucent the more wax you add to your mixtures.

Cold wax techniques deliver the best results when an absorbent surface is used. Both rigid and flexible surfaces are suitable, which means that you can paint on paper, canvas, or panel.

It is useful to be aware that cold wax-mixed oil paints and pigments are quite hard and challenging to apply with a brush. Because of this, a lot of cold wax oil painting artists decide to use a silicone spreader, painting knife, or brayer to apply their first coat of color. You might follow the same procedure and use different tools to work into these first layers in order to remove color and add texture.

All in all, while working with cold wax mediums, experimenting is essential. Many oil and cold wax artists believe that if you're comfortable using cold wax mediums, you may expand your approach to incorporate a variety of unconventional paint applications, which can produce some really interesting and surprising effects.