Sunday, May 16, 2010

It gets scary sometimes

Sometimes I find myself envisioning a project one way, but then it ends up as something else from what I had in mind. I call these my scary paintings-- or well, maybe just my scary moments. Here's one:

You can see some light blue flowers, leaves, and swirls. I had thought about using a blue resist and then painting in different shades of blue on a white background. Something summery. But, the colored resist didn't hold up too well and there were some small leaks. So, I soaked the silk a little while to wash out it out some more, and what you see is what was left after rinsing. I then decided to draw additional, similar designs right over what was already there to overlap and camouflage any mistakes.

Here's how it looked next:

Well, next I decided that the white background just wasn't going to work. There were still some small little breaks in the resist. So, I first wet the background to find any other weaknesses in the resist.

All in all, that's not so bad. I did tighten up the resist borders and then waited for this to dry. Then I put on the final background wash. I selected what I thought would be a dark color-- enough to cover any little "vacations." But, this is when it gets scary. If it breaks into a flower it's all over, it's not easy to get out all the dye if I'm not fast enough. I arm myself at this point with a handful of q-tips-- and some clear water.

Here it is with the wash on (the silk is still wet).
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And, here it is after it has dried.
Okay, maybe not so scary after all, but it IS different from what I thought. After steam setting I went back and highlighted with metallic blue and some purple, and silver too. Looks cool (but, I flaked on taking a pic at that point).