Who Am I, Where Am I Going

I started thinking about my family history when my grandma died, about a year ago. I went through a big box of old family photos and considered doing a series of paintings along that theme. With my new interest in encaustics, I decided to revisit the idea and use some of the imagery from the photos to start with. The nice thing about encaustic painting is the opportunity to incorporate collage elements and create textural layers. I worked on this portrait of my mother this afternoon. Not exactly the look I was going for. I'm still experimenting with what I get when I do this or that. I did a quick sketch on tissue paper, did another pass at it using diluted acrylic paint (probably won't dilute the acrylic next time if I'm working with tissue, it just bleeds). Then I put down a layer of beeswax onto a panel surface and "painted on" my drawing with another layer of wax medium (beeswax and damar resin crystals). I really liked the texture I got with the tissue paper and the way the line drawing didn't disappear under the wax coating. Then I started adding pigmented wax (mainly to correct some errors in my drawing) and then started noticing the areas where the tissue was building up more than the other areas. I ironed it and then decided to just go with it. I kept adding color (I'm working with a limited color palette. Just the basics now. So, in the end it turned out a little brighter than I wanted and maybe a little to random in the textured areas (some thicker in areas I didn't want it). Since I'm here at school, I don't have my hands on some other collage pieces that I'll be able to get next weekend. I have my grandmas cookbooks, and hand written recipes, things like that. Old stamps, etc. We'll see how this goes but I think this might be a good focus, at least to learn a few things while I'm getting the feel for encaustics.