Facinating textures with minimal effort

After a very shaky start, I have finally started to feel comfortable with the silk painting process. I wouldn't claim anything near competent, but at least I am now starting to see what magic lies underneath the craft. With a few brush strokes and different dyes one can create the most amazing fluid stripes, as soft as soft, or bright as bright as one wants. The simple addition of salt, either rock salt or table salt (no iodine) added to a pool of colour or several circles of different colours, one can watch as the dyes magically move and swirl into patterns and extract the colours that have been mixed.
The silk I used for this was habutai pre rolled scarves. There are many types of silk, and it can be confusing. Tissue or chiffon is very very fine and often used for nuno felt. Habutai is a more dense weave and provides a firmer surface for applying dyes. Sometimes, this will also be called Japanese silk or Pongee. There is also thicker and more densely woven silks, all of which are okay to use.
This is probably the most expensive part of the whole process, but when the cost of a silk scarf is compared to the cost of the fabric to paint, it really does make a very reasonable gift for your mum, friends or even cris cringle.
A good reference I used is Silk Painting: New ideas and textures, Jill Kennedy & Jane Varrall. There is a lot of information on all the different techniques one can use.

Waiting for inspiration

Look what I got... yes a very good friend, reading my blog about getting back into creating, promptly busted her stash and delivered me a series of silk painting trays, frames, books and even included a set of scarves to get me going. She is off to New York for the summer holidays, and I have the use of all her wonderful stuff while she is away. Only requirement, I send her updates of my progress. As is often the case, best laid plans are sure to go awry. For two days it rained and thundered and rained some more, so I was not able to even consider setting up. Then today, the sky was clear, the wind had stopped and every other thing I had listed to do for the day was quickly sorted, or reshuffled on the list.

 

I set up on the front porch, fresh air, lots of open space good light, dyes ready and pot of tea at my side. Quick refresher from the 'how to section' of one of the books and oops, I realise that the gutta has not arrived. I had ordered some with other dyes late last week, but as can happen the post had not yet arrived.
Oh well, I can report I have begun. I have set up, I have gotten the workspace comfy, and I am sure by tomorrow I will have collected the final bits and pieces.
If not, then maybe I can jump straight to the more exotic processes like, wet on wet, salt tossing and marbling!!!!

existential crisis's

How does one spell crisis plural? I am sure someone can tell us.
well, it has been a few weeks since I managed to sit at the computer and feel able to share anything slightly creative. I feel guilty at not having responded to a few comments people had sent to me. Especially one related to my last blog, where it seems the pictures of my tapestry did not upload. I will try to restore these asap.
I have been out and about a bit and look forward to sharing some of the interesting art and craft work I have been enjoying, but for now just want to check in and say hi!
Existential crisis's are not fun, and I feel as if I have been in a big deep hole. Although I was generally out and about "doing" "stuff" it felt as if most of the time I had a large veil covering my brain and I couldn't quite see or think. Of course I was doing lots of thinking, maybe too much. Then one morning, poof, just like that the veil seems to have lifted and my energy returned. While a struggle at the time, now I am coming out the other side it feels as if it was worth it.
somewhere in all of that thinking and wallowing I managed to readjust all the bits and find a direction for where to from now. One plan is to do a lot more silk painting and shibori work. So lots more about that soon too.