Commission - Days 3 & 4

Day 3.

Early Friday, before going to set up the booth at Art in the Garden, I rinsed both pieces of "real" silk for this commission, in order to get the discharge paste off the fabric.  Then, of course, they each needed to be wrapped in towels and ironed, one at a time.  

That was really all I had time for.






Day 4 (Sunday)

Art in the Garden

After unloading the truck from all the stuff carted to the Art in the Garden show, I was able to get downstairs and mix up a fresh batch of print paste.

Print Paste

This is made from sodium alginate, a natural ingredient derived from seaweed (I'm told). It allows you to silkscreen colors by holding them in a paint-like consistency.
Like many "potions" and solutions in dyeing, it has a shelf-life; it can go bad, become soupy, or dry out, depending on atmospheric conditions and whether or not the Dye Gods are on your side that day.  

Then I stretched the test piece onto my print table and began printing the images that would need hand painting.  This was the part that I was really testing:  how this thicker silk would respond to my dye paste and my dye painting.  Would the paste penetrate the cloth fully?  Would the colors I painted in bleed out of their lines?  Would the silk itself take up the dye the way I expected?

 After waiting for all the images to dry, I painted in a leaf -- very very carefully.    Success.

Next up was the question of how the silk would take up my resist material -- this is often called "gutta" or what some people think of as "batik," although it is neither.  It does operate the same way, however, which is by resisting the dye painted along side or over it.  In this case, we needed to increase the detail and interest of each grouse by allowing some of the bird to NOT receive color.  The white barring on the feathers, for instance.   The material is applied with a small squeeze bottle, and I'm not very good at this because years ago I ruined my right hand grading papers at the University of Michigan.  70 hours a week writing on freshman comp papers did it in, and now I have to be careful how much I use or over-use the hand...Nevertheless, I managed to resist a few birds and let it dry for the rest of the day.  I needed a break; though I love working in the studio on a Sunday because I get to listen to great jazz on WEMU,  I needed to give myself some time off.  More tomorrow!