Saturday 10 June 2006

Painting with Dye ..........

This is one of the many pieces I hand dyed a few weeks ago during the dyeing session for the Round Robin. I used the low immersion technique for most pieces, including this one, but tried hand painting using Procion MX dye as well. The samples below are just a couple of the hand painted ones:


I love this piece. This is my first attempt at hand painting using dye. I cut a 1 yard square of fabric and soaked it in a soda ash solution. I attached it to my silk painting frame and first soaked it with water as I wanted the dyes to blend together. I then painted it with dye using a 2" paint brush. I left it to dry overnight. It was still a little damp in the morning which was good as I was a little concerned that it would dry too quickly. I rinsed until the water ran clear and put it in the washing machine on a 40 degrees cycle with just a little non biological washing powder.


I love this piece too. Sadly it's so sunny this morning I couldn't photograph it very well. This is also hand painted with dye.


The garden is slowly getting back to normal after the huge amount of work we have been doing in prep for the log cabin. In amongst the mayhem this beautiful paeony has appeared in all its beauty. There are about another 9 buds ready to bloom. In the Spring I moved two very large paeonies from the back garden to the front. They are thriving - much to my surprise as I am not sure they like being moved - these ones obviously did.

Speaking of moving plants. Yesterday afternoon I took a chance and moved a Clematis which would have been totally hidden by the log cabin had I left it where it was. I took as much of a root ball as I could and moved the whole thing to the front of the foundation for the Log Cabin. I watered it well and covered it's "feet" with pebbles. Clematis like their heads in the sun and feet in the shade. The first thing I did when I woke this morning was to check whether it had survived. To my amazement it has. It hasn't dropped as I expected it to. I shall feed and water it again today and hope all those buds flower in a day or two. Now I will be able to see it from the log cabin window.

I need to do some work on my C&G course today. I took some line, texture, colour and shape photographs yesterday evening and hope to get my sketchbook started. I have already finished the digital "line" work in Paintshop Pro. I upgraded to PSP X and it is little different from 9 so not too much additional learning there. I have learned some new things already about PSP from Marie my tutor.

I want to get the garden fence painted - I was very daring a couple of years ago and painted it greeny/blue - this time I will stick to "fence brown"!!! That can wait until tomorrow though, today I am "playing".


1 comment:

Dianne said...

Hello Carol
Your dying is all really lovely, so don't you worrry about sending you silk dye painting is goregous.
I'd love to recieve it and I'm sure anyones else will be too..
Brilliant..