Wax & Words Workshop: an interactive ebook with 80 pages of instruction and nine videos from Lyn Belisle's studio

Why make an eBook?

The workshops at my studio sell out fast - nice for me, for sure, but not so good for people who want to take them and can’t get in, or for people who don’t live near my studio. What to do?

Here’s what I decided . . .I’ll bring my most popular workshops to you through a series of video eBooks. I’ll be there with you, explaining every step as we go along.

These ebooks have insider tips and expanded resources that will allow you to experience a workshop on your own time with me as I work in my studio. But wait, there’s more - it’s cheaper ($18 as opposed to $65+) and you can watch the videos as many times as you need to as you work. It's in intereactive PDF format so the pages and videos will show on both Macs and PCs.

This is the third eBook in the series and the second with video instruction included. Wax & Words will teach you some basic encaustic techniques as well as some ways to use very personal writing and mark-making in creative ways.
You can see a video preview of the book at this link on YouTube (just copy and paste it in your browser window) : https://youtu.be/scH-O9tGkpk

The Wax & Words concept came about when a poet friend asked me to create an introductory encaustic workshop for her writing group. I had just read an article about Emily Dickinson that described hundreds of poems in various states of composition that her sister Lavinia found after Emily’s death. Lavinia also found, intriguingly, the “scraps,” a cache of lines that Dickinson wrote on scavenged paper: the flap of a manila envelope, the backs of letters, chocolate wrappers, bits of newspaper. Shards and clues!

This is not a poetry workshop nor an extensive encaustic workshop, but an expressive combination of content and process. You’ll learn about asemic writing, a wordless open semantic form of writing, as a component of evocative collage. The word asemic means “having no specific semantic content,” or “without the smallest unit of meaning.” With the non-specificity of asemic writing there comes a vacuum of meaning, which is left for the reader to fill in and interpret.

In this Wax & Words Workshop eBook, you’ll find unique ways to create fascinating visual mysteries using scraps of words and enigmatic marks, compellingly arranged and captured behind layers of translucent beeswax. You’ll learn what collage materials work well with beeswax and encaustic medium.

We will explore mark-making with all kinds of tools, including sticks, stamps, and sprayed walnut ink over stencils. We will also use a bit of veiled imagery as a “grace mark” to emphasize the mystery and meaning of our collage work. Areas of the artwork will be isolated, then covered with thin layers of beeswax to add translucency to the mystery of the marks. The resulting work is elegant, personal, and timeless.

The poetic blend of writing and beeswax is magical, and the videos will inspire you to make these projects your own personal works from the heart.