When it doesn't quite work

I'm working on a new piece that will be given as a thank you gift. These always make me nervous because I worry that the person who commissioned it will hate it or that the person receiving it will hate it. It's easier sometimes to paint and experiment and if it turns into something that sells it's great, but there's no expectation that it will.

As usual, I started with washing, then stretching.

I started drawing the resist lines and adding in dye. But, this one started out looking a little messy. The resist lines didn't hold and there was a lot of bleeding.

After trying to work with it for a while, I decided to take it off the stretcher and rewash. I washed out all the resist and hopefully whatever was in the silk that kept the lines from holding.

I kept working at it, adding layers on layers.

Here it is now, just about ready to steam.

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).