The Best Beeswax for Encaustic Painting
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Ready to make your own encaustic wax? You’re going to need some beeswax as well as damar resin, which adds translucency and helps to harden your formula so you can properly blend in your pigments. Your beeswax can either be natural or refined to remove all impurities; both are suitable for encaustic painting, but note that raw beeswax can add unexpected colors and finishes. When shopping, you’ll see that the substance comes in different forms: You can buy wax as pellets or blocks. Whatever your choice, your beeswax should melt easily into a consistent mixture. Ready to paint like it’s 400 C.E.? Browse our top beeswax picks below.
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ARTnews RECOMMENDS
R&F White Beeswax
A go-to beeswax for encaustic painters of all levels, R&F’s product comes in small pellets that melt quickly and smoothly. The white pieces have undergone a mechanical filtration to decolorize them—a process that is gentler on the wax than chemical bleaching and helps to refine without weakening. You can trust R&F to deliver consistently sized pellets that are easy to pour and measure out and help you stick to your recipes. Finally, we like this wax because it comes in bags of three varied sizes: one, five, and 10 pounds.
Buy: $19.16–$174.50
R&F White Beeswax
WE ALSO LIKE
Enkaustikos U.S. Pharmaceutical Grade Beeswax
Enkaustikos, a premier encaustics manufacturer, is a great upgrade pick for artists willing to spend a couple more dollars on their materials. Like our top choice, this brand of beeswax has been purified without any harsh chemicals. We find it a touch richer than R&F’s beeswax, imparting a slightly glossy look to paints. The pellets are very thin, which means they melt and blend beautifully. This is a good option for artists looking for smaller quantities, as the beeswax is available in an eight-ounce resealable bag.
Buy: $12.326–$19.79
Enkaustikos Pharmaceutical Grade Beeswax
A GOOD ALTERNATIVE
Gamblin Cold Wax Medium
If you don’t want to fuss with heat and melting, consider using cold wax, which is a soft paste you can use straight from the jar. Gamblin’s, which is made of natural beeswax, mineral spirits, and alkyd resin, delivers the luminosity of traditional encaustic wax. It has a creamy, soft texture that is easy to mix with paint—you can even spread it with a palette knife—and is odorless to boot! This 16-ounce tin will last you a long time—a little goes a long way.
Buy: Gamblin Cold Wax Medium $22.85
STUDENTS’ CHOICE
Encaustic Art Wax Blocks
If you’re new to encaustic wax, you might want to consider getting precolored blocks before diving into making your own custom colors. The quality of these innovative, German-made sticks, about the size of a standard eraser, is superb for the price and they are made with pigments with good lightfastness. This variety pack comes with 16 colors tucked in a cool box, and you can easily mix colors to create even more shades!
Buy: Encaustic Art Wax Blocks $35.00
ALSO CONSIDER
Williamsburg Pure Beeswax
If you need to make a large amount of encaustic medium, consider buying beeswax in blocks. It takes longer to melt, but you can just toss a block or more into your pot rather than handle pellets, which can be messier. Blocks are also easy to store! This bleached beeswax comes in a soft off-white color and is debris-free. You’ll notice that it results in a muted, low-luster sheen when used as a painting medium.
Buy: $20.57
Williamsburg Pure Beeswax
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1. Sky Organics White Beeswax Pellets
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This beeswax from a small, family-owned company is an excellent base ingredient for DIY products, from candles to skin-care indulgences. The ivory pellets are cosmetic grade and consistently clean, having been processed in small batches and triple-filtered. They also have no unpleasant smell and hold fragrances well, and their near-colorless appearance makes them easy to tint or use in encaustic painting. Pellets also melt quickly, making them an especially convenient form of beeswax.
Buy: Sky Organics White Beeswax Pellets
2. Better Shea Butter Texas Beeswax
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This yellow beeswax from apiaries in Texas is a responsibly sourced option that can be used for a variety of projects. Rich and filtered, it has a slightly smoky-honey smell that can be disguised with essential oils if you wish. This beeswax comes in one solid brick, which you can grate or cut up (with some effort), but the easiest way to use it would be to melt it at one go. In our book, this is a great pick if you want to make multiples of one product at once; otherwise, you can melt the brick, sculpt your own smaller wax disks or cubes as the wax rehardens, and save them for another creative session.
Buy: Better Shea Butter Texas Beeswax
3. Beesworks Yellow Beeswax Bars
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If you like the idea of beeswax in pre-weighed form and don’t want to deal with dividing a large brick, consider the stuff in bars. This cosmetic-grade beeswax comes in 1-ounce pieces so it’s simple to use exactly the right amount for your recipe. (The bars are also easy to cut if you need some fraction of an ounce.) We also like their size as you can use an individual bar to condition small things like thread or the stiff joints of wooden antiques. Once heated, they melt relatively quickly and have a smooth, almost satiny consistency. In solid form these blocks have a noticeable smell.
Buy: Beesworks Yellow Beeswax Bars
4. Stakich Yellow Beeswax Block
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Resembling a package of American cheese, this dense, somewhat flat square of beeswax can be cut up into smaller bars with greater ease than cutting up a wax brick. While you could use it to make candles, it does have a smell that might overpower your blend of essential oils. But this is a high-quality, debris-free wax that would be great for waterproofing garments and gear, from boots to backpacks. We also recommend using it as a furniture polish to treat wooden objects and give them a soft, low-luster sheen.
Buy: Stakich Yellow Beeswax Block
5. Beesworks Beeswax Pellets
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If you like the cheery yellow of beeswax, this is a great pellet option for creating bright and natural-looking products. It is almost as good as the Sky Organics product and also more economical. The pellet sizes are consistent so they melt uniformly, and the results mix well with other ingredients to make candles, body butters, and the like. It does have a noticeable smoky aroma that some people might find off-putting, but the right essential oils should mask this small flaw.
Buy: Beesworks Beeswax Pellets
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