Is there encaustic wax painting software?
Easel by Zaweba includes encaustic wax paint, which sets as it cools, and a heat gun to melt it again so you can rework and fuse layers.
Encaustic wax is one of the paints in Easel by Zaweba, a free and offline painting studio for Windows, added in version 1.1. Like real encaustic it sets as it cools, and the heat gun melts it again, so you can rework a passage, soften an edge or fuse layers together.
Encaustic painting uses pigment mixed into hot wax, usually beeswax with a resin. It is applied while molten, hardens almost at once as it cools, and can be reheated to move it again. The results have a glowing, layered depth that is hard to get with any other paint. It is also a messy, smelly craft that needs a heated palette, good ventilation and a lot of care, which is one reason people like to try it digitally first.
How encaustic behaves in Easel
The key thing about encaustic is the cooling. A stroke of wax only stays workable for a moment before it sets. Easel follows that: encaustic sets as it cools. Once set, it stays put until you bring heat back with the heat gun, which melts it again so you can push it around, blend it into what is next to it, or let it flow.
That gives you the working cycle of real encaustic: lay wax, let it set, add more, reheat to fuse. It is quite unlike oil, which stays wet for a long time, or watercolour, which flows freely.
Surfaces and tools
Encaustic is traditionally painted on a rigid support, since the wax can crack on something flexible. Easel's surfaces include wood panel, gessoed panel, hardboard, MDF and clay board, all sensible choices.
The tools that suit wax are the broad ones. Flat and hake brushes lay down even strokes. Painting knives and the scraper move wax around and reveal layers below. The sgraffito stylus scratches into a surface, which is a technique encaustic painters use a lot. Stamps and collage also have a long history in encaustic, and Easel offers stamps and collage with tissue, newspaper, fabric, coloured paper or a photo.
Light and texture
Wax builds a surface with relief, and Easel turns paint height into a surface lit by a movable light with direction, height and relief settings. A low light across the panel shows brushwork and knife marks. Flat light switches the relief off when you want to judge the colours alone.
Colour
Colour mixes the way pigment does, using the Kubelka-Munk model, so translucent layers stack as glazes. That matters for encaustic, whose beauty comes from seeing one layer through another. Paint sets, a colour picker and My colours give you the colours, and the physical palette lets you mix them by hand.
Why try it digitally
Real encaustic needs equipment and space. A digital version lets you experiment with layering and the rhythm of setting and reheating before you buy a heated palette. It is also handy for planning a real piece, since you can try colour combinations quickly. Undo keeps 80 steps by default and includes drying, and a saved .zeasel file keeps the state of your paint for another day.
When the picture is finished, export to PNG, JPEG or TIFF at 1x or 2x, with or without the relief lighting, or turn the session into a time-lapse video.
