As a long time painting artist, I know of hundreds of ways to create art on canvas and paper. I think nothing of switching from pastels to oils to alcohol inks without too much thought. Without realizing it over the course of years, I had developed an expertise in many mediums simply by using them over and over 🙂
Portrait Painting Demo with pastels
So as I began to expand my silk painting it did not take me long to realize that there were as many methods to add color to silk as there was to canvas! I remember my early confusion at reading about dyes and paints in the big catalogues and trying to make sense out of conflicting information!
hand painting at a show
And of course I wanted to skip the learning curve and get right into the silk art! Think about it: All those methods such as steaming, not steaming, heat setting, instant set, dye paints, dyes, fabrics, types of silk……the list of what to know seemed dauntless at first!
In college I studied printmaking, so carving my own blocks to print on silk was not a problem. I mean there is a huge industry in the arts devoted to stamping but I wanted mine to be unique!
My horse blocks
Carving 5 or 6 blocks of just horses has given me so many options for variety and I know that no one else has those images!
And then of course there was the method I use most often, drawing with resist! I love the water based resists. I am not into suffering for my art 🙂 and melting wax, using the equivalent of oils in resists just wasn’t for me.
Stamping on silk
So making stretcher bars (from canvas stretchers!) has been a solution to drawing out my designs then adding the dyes. There is something zen-like in hand painting anything and watching silk dyes flow up to the resist lines is very much like painting in watercolors…except the resist acts as a “dam” to control the flow of dye.
Applying the resist
Hand painted Poppies
Hand painted (and Ecoprinted) silk wraps
And then there are the dyes that required steaming and I found rice steamers at the Goodwill that worked! I went from scarves to clothes and love to work my large pieces into garments!
So in my hand painted silk, I love to experiment. I love the colors, the designs and often incorpoarte both into my ecoprinted! There is nothing more beautiful than silk drying on the clothesline!
Hand painted silk drying on the line!
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