In my travels with Enkaustikos, I have the great pleasure of being able to talk to many people about how different effects can be created with the extremely versatile encaustic medium. The image shown is of a sample I share that seems to get the most response. People are intrigued by the thin, flat surface and yet, the piece has an incredible sense of depth. What I want to show is how it is possible to get create an illusion of depth with just a few layers. In this piece, there are actually 8 layers of wax medium including a base coat and the top coat. I used a combination of yellow beeswax medium and XD wax medium as my painting medium and in between each layer I drew circles of different colors using encaustic paint, paint sticks, oil paint, oil pastel and soft pastel. I used an array of different mediums to draw the circles to also illustrate that there are many art supplies that are compatible with the encaustic process. 

My process was simple, in that I painted a layer of medium using a hake brush, fuse to bond but also to level out the brush strokes, then drew my circles, and repeated with the medium. I ended with a top coat of medium and fused. I used a wide scraper to further level the surface and finally reheated one last time to remove any scrape marks. Try using papers, threads, pressed dried plants as well.