Early Morning Painting

Really early morning stuff.
Nothing on my agenda today so I finally took myself outside at 6:30 AM to paint in the cool still air. The weather has been too hot during the day to consider but I'd gradually moved things out of storage so I could act at a moments whim and replenish my fabrics.

I have a goal in mind.
Northern lights.
Yes, I can abstractly cut fabric and suggest the impression but I think I should be able to get paint to do a reasonable job.  Its the fading off into nothing, and they way the colours cross without blending that is still just out of reach.
If I used opaque paint then the lightness would disappear, so I need to play, play play with the transparent pigments.

First 4 off the line.

Playing with 'barely there' I added salt to force the paint to move and hung it up to control the direction.

The drama created by the pigment movement is astounding, and the wetter the fabric the better the action.

Each is different but reminiscent of sky or water.
A quick hot iron set the paint so these pieces are ready for phase two.
We'll see what tomorrow brings.

Making Birch Bark Cloth

My stock was getting low and to do the piece I've been thinking about I want some long pieces. So outside to the garage with a meter sq. of white cotton and black paint.

First up was to splatter paint the whole in black and then a lesser amount of orange. After this dried it was ironed to set the paint.

Second go around entailed wetting the fabric with a spray bottle and then spattering heavier blobs.
I let it set or partially dry for about five minutes . After standing the frame on its side I resprayed the cloth heavily in some areas, to encourage the paint to run.

Whole metre above and below, about 1/9th, the bottom left hand corner.

After it dried the whole piece was re-ironed. This is now permanent.
Now when this is cut vertically into strips, the dripping becomes the horizontal bands on the birch bark.

Background Frames

I did run a few errands today and played a bit with some dye colours. But as the heat drove me back indoors, I retreated to my sewing room and completed 4 of the background for birds.

Each follows the suggested outlines from the block prints I made first and each is either picked out or accented with one of 5 colours.  I think that will be enough, but who knows. I can add more when I finish each piece.

5 Birch - Final

This will only be 2  days late for our anniversary. I finished quilting the whole piece, everything but the leaves and the boles of the the birch trees. That took two days.
I'll finish the edges of this tomorrow, with a facing, and hang in it my dining room for Hubby.

Gee what a Lucky guy!

Painted Fabric - 3

I was a little slow off the mark today. I didn't think the day would warm up enough to get the rapid drying I like. But it did!
I have quite a bit of fresh fabric and I have a number of things in my head that I intend to do.....
Which first?
Do I have all I want/need?
One thing my group of friends didn't want to do this time round was a dedicated background, It is something I've done before but there were a few things I wanted to try. It's easy to get a sharp edge with paint. It's done by using dry material. The paint doesn't move unless you push it, either with the applicator or water.

I'd seen a few interesting pieces so I thought I'd see if I could create a usable piece.

After adding and heat setting a light blue wash to the whole cloth, I dry brushed some purple hills.

Some green/brown hills, again dry brushed and heat set.

Green hills, dry set, water, sponge applied, and then "trees" dabbed on with the edge of a sponge brush.


Nice but a little dull, so I gave the whole piece a darker blue wash and crumpled it and set it to dry.

     Yes, I sat and watched paint dry,
                            ( well not really but that's the last piece.)

So now I have this on a FQ. A lot more is going on and other features are implied.

And what did I do while I "watched the paint dry"?
I made a piece of RED RED.

From the first pass of dilute pure colours

                     to this delicious FQ of RED











That's it for today!

Painting (when its raining outside)

Well that new enterprise was stopped cold by this weather.
But never say never.
I've been wanting to find a better solution for storing the diluted paint concentrate. I had been using "condiment "bottles from the $ store but the caps seem to disappear and they don't seal properly. There is a lot of mess.

So while I was renewing the primary paint, I switched it to water bottles. These have a really tight closing. I did like the squeeze bottles because you can be really spontaneous and draw with the bottle, but for now, I need organized and tidy.

I also used up some leftovers looking for a "nice" brown. ( It seems to be my theme this month.)
You can come at it from two directions,. adding black to orange or adding yellow to purple. (both of these use a lot of yellow paint; I need to order another litre).

Then I added both results to my "rusty" piece.

 Now  we're getting an interesting piece of cloth.

First Day of Painting

(Well actually I did a little last night.)

I did two things last night. One was a quick pastel painting using some of the colours I had left from last fall.
Nice but I really want to get away from PASTEL, if I can with the translucent paints.
My husband is really lobbying for me to shift into dyes. He already bought all the materials a while ago and I baulked at all the fuss.
But I think it is on the books this summer.


One thing I DID want to try, so I set this up last night, was RUST dying. I rue the fact I purged the garage last summer of most of the rusty stuff, but I did find a jar of brads.
Water and vinegar and leave them over night. I can see this as a really interesting addition to brown batiks or so-so materials.

Voila
And with the addition of 3 shades of yellow/green paint, a rather interesting first piece.

I'm already seeing bear or deer.

I had saved the paper pieces from the fusible web maple leaves I used in one of the Bear Pieces to see if they would make suitable negative stencils. They worked well but I learned, the plastic side MUST go down.

 I tried a little sun printing as well.

Last night's effort was too pale, so it was heavily over painted with red, salted, then dilute black and crumpled.
All in all, a busy day. I don't usually work in reds.
Not sure what my aim is for these pieces. I'm still working on technique and colour mixing.