Project 5 - Painting and Printing on Fabric - Silk Painting

Let me first start by saying that I have NEVER painted on silk before. I didn't even realise that I needed a frame to hold the silk taut. It has just been something that has never appealed to me, mainly because my only experience of painted silk had been garish scarves covered with bright flowers. Once you put 'silk painting' into Google, you will see plenty of that, however you will also see some amazing images created by very talented artists. It opened my eyes to what is achievable with silk paints.

I'm still going with the honeycomb pattern as I like how it has developed since those early sketches. When I used the watercolours to create the initial image, the small cells started to look like very strange landscapes as seen from the inside as opposed to the original context of cells filled with larvae or honey. I wanted to build upon this with the silk painting as I knew that the qualities that the paints had, would give another level entirely.

The first attempt was quite good in my opinion, it was really just about using the materials and getting used to how they worked in my hand. I realised that in places, I hadn't used the gutta effectively and that the colour started to bleed.

The salt that is intended for silk painting use, didn't give me the effect I really wanted for this piece. It was far more grainy than coarse sea salt for example. I made the cells quite big and the 'alien' landscape that I was trying to convey actually looked more like the original drawings.

For my next attempt, I was a lot more patient. I allowed the gutta to dry overnight rather than attempting to paint when it was still damp. I also took a lot more time placing the grains of salt to make sure that it wasn't just a haphazard sprinkle.

Initially, the hexagon outlines were in a very pale yellow similar to the one used in the first attempt. however when I had finished the cells, I felt that they needed to be lifted more. So I used a brown and black mix of paint which I feel, framed the cells and gave the image more of a 3D effect. 

This is definitely a medium I can see myself using in future work, I like the way the paints work together but I know I will need a lot more practice. Hence the the dark cell, as that is what happens when you are careless and drip where you don't want to!

Planning for my silk painting attempt using watercolours

I'm waiting on some silk gutta and a frame to be delivered so I thought I'd try my honeycomb and bee out in watercolours to see how that would look. I tried to use similar techniques that I will be using in the silk painting experiments i.e salt to leech colour and using the paint on wet paper. I also used the lino cut of the bee, painted with watercolour to give a brief outline that I could work with.

I'm really pleased with the end result and I'm looking forward to trying this in silk painting.

Project 5 - Printing and Painting on fabric

As a repeatable pattern, I felt that the honeycomb would be easier to achieve - but only as a stepping stone to giving me the confidence and abilities to use more complicated images. However it was actually more challenging than I thought it would be.

I will be trying to fine tune the pattern today - turning it into a repeatable pattern, using a program very similar to Illustrator.

I spent Saturday afternoon carving a print of the honeybee from the original sketch. This was intended as a print cut to break up the honeycomb pattern in places. It printed very differently on paper using printer's ink, a much heavier and intense image, even when there was less ink on the block.

Using a very thin fabric with a satin sheen to it produced a much lighter print of the bee, giving it more texture. If you look at the black stripes, you can see a slightly 'hairy' effect which was not part of the block cut, unlike the cross hatching on the thorax. This was not evident on the paper print but seemed to be entirely a side effect of the fabric paint on the sheen.

Printing and Painting on fabric - fabric

I decided to take a break from the honeycomb pattern, turning again to my sketches of the horse's skull from our visit to Provost Skene's House in Aberdeen. I'm not sure why but the image has really stuck with me and I wanted to see if I could recreate it in lino cut and print.

I'm now using a speedy carve material for my printing. It's a lot easier to cut into although it is easier to make mistakes as well!

black ink on white paper

white fabric paint on black cotton

I am really pleased with how this has transferred onto the fabric. I like how it has changed from being a simple cross section of one of my sketches to a different object altogether. At one point I saw a caterpillar on a leaf and another time, I was thinking of a spine and muscle around the vertebrae. It isn't an image that seems to transfer as a repetitive image but I'm going to be experimenting with that tomorrow.

Project 5 - Printing & Painting on fabric

It's been a long time since I've done any kind of printing and I think that was with a potato when I was in Primary school or with one of those little printing sets I got one Christmas.

I decided to go with one of the sketches I have done from the honeycomb set, this was one of the earliest sketches I did and I was actually very pleased with the way that the bee turned out.

I chose to focus on the honeycomb that you can see I coloured in. The next step for me was to choose a printing material that I would feel comfortable with. I have never tried lino block cutting before and it took several attempts to get an image that I thought looked anything like the honeycomb. I found the traditional lino block very difficult to use and tried using a much softer type of lino cut. This had a definite advantage in that I didn't have to exert too much pressure on the cutter to get the shape or lines although I had to be careful not to mark any of the areas that I wanted to keep in the print, as the softness of the lino would definitely have been affected. I'm also printing these on paper with printing ink to get an idea of what they look like before I take the step of printing onto fabric.

I was disappointed that some of the lines in the outer segments weren't raised enough to leave a print so decided to try again.

As you can see, I tried repeating the pattern. I'm going to have a couple more attempts at the lino cut before I make a decision which one to try on fabric although I actually prefer the second one, above.