Pink in Watercolour and Textile Art

Watercolour Painting Lesson: Two Coloured Background Wash

At our Friday painting group, I gave this lesson last week. Here are some directions if you would like to try it:

• Wet the paper
• When the shine is starting to go off of the paper, start at the top and add a very rich strip of your chosen colour. Add successively lighter strips of colour until about a third of the way down the paper. Keep your board slightly tilted to allow the colour to run down.
• While the paper is still wet, turn your board 180 degrees and add a strip of another colour at the top. Continue as with the first colour. Allow the two colours to move close together in the middle of the paper.
• When you are satisfied with the blending, lay flat and allow to dry completely.
• Add a silhouette of your choice to the top of the background.  
• On this sample piece, I lifted out a few highlights in the water at the end.

For the year end review, I had a look back at some art work in watercolour and in textile for 2014. Here are some PINK samples.

 Some work from the first online art course I have taken. If you have ever thought of taking one of Jane Lafazio's courses, I would recommend it. http://janelafazio.com/online-classes/

Joan, added pieced squares to my hand painted hollyhock squares. I am still thrilled with this wall hanging.

 Click here for more information on painting with dyes on cotton fabric.

 For this watercolour technique I used pen and ink. It has a nostalgic look, don't you think? 

Fabric painting with a Gelli Plate.  Win was the instructor for this fun workshop I took this spring. Click here for several excellent mixed media tutorials http://windinnart.blogspot.com/

I had fun quilting on a 40 + year old Bernia sewing machine.

Gelli Plate Play On Fabric

I took a workshop 'Gelli It Up' at the College of the Rockies College of the Rockies, Creston, BC, Summer Series with Win Dinn http://windinnart.blogspot.ca/ this past weekend. It was an excellent, fun, well organized course which I would highly recommend.

 

The idea of mono-printing so appealed to me, that I put aside my beloved thickened dyes to work with fabric paint on textiles. I did have a lot of fun and below are few of my creations.  

Texture making tools and foam stamps by www.artfoamies.com

 I had the pleasure of trialing  several of these stamps from this excellent, Canadian company. The stamps were well used all weekend by participants of the workshop who were using acrylic paints and they stood up perfectly to frequent washing. I was printing on fabric (mostly) and the other participants were printing on paper  (mostly) and the stamps worked equally well on both.

 

The foam stamps are sturdy, and thick enough that marks are cut into the foam for additional detail. As I like birds, those are the ones I am trialing but this family run company has many more designs so be sure to check out their website. http://www.artfoamies.com/ Also, you can have them create a specific stamp for you. Love that idea! 

 



Texture was created on the gelli plate. Then I removed some paint by pressing a bird stamp into the paint. Next the fabric was laid over top and pressed into the plate thus transferring the design. Neat huh! I am definitely going to try more of this technique.

Using a similar technique as above, creating texture and stamping the egg stamp into the paint. Then I pressed a magazine page onto the gelli plate

After creating the background fabric piece, I over stamped it using the heron stamp. Wouldn't herons look great pink! Note I changed the angle of one of the bird's heads purposely for a little variety. This piece is ready for some free motion stitching don't you think.

Here, I am experimenting with placing Pebeo Setacolor fabric paint on to the Gelli plate using a bayer to create a thin layer, stamping to remove paint and then laying fabric on top to print the image. Also I stamped directly onto the fabric with the stamp. Notice the second ghost print of the dragonfly. I did this by stamping a second time before reloading with paint. Wouldn't these techniques make terrific one of a kind quilt blocks?

Stamping fabric paint onto printed material. Oh I can see some wonderful applications for this technique. We all have printed fabric we maybe aren't in love with anymore. Why not overprint with textile paint using foam stamps to create something we would sew with?

For this print I rolled acrylic black paint and Golden's GAC 900 textile medium onto the Gelli plate. Stamping onto the plate, I removed some of the paint. When I laid the fabric onto the plate, the negative space around the image was transferred. Fun!

My friend gave me this piece of eyelet, leftover from curtain making. Isn't there always a story to these stray pieces of fabric we have in our stashes. I created texture on the fabric by using a stencil on the gelli plate. When the piece was dry I over stamped it using a cadmium red acrylic paint mixed with textile medium. I don't know yet what I am going to do with this piece but it will be something, because I ADORE it. Let me know if you have some suggestions.








Mixing Dye Concentrates

Today it felt wonderfully comforting to be painting with dyes again having been away from it from it for a couple of weeks. How did I managed to get red dye on the underside of both forearms? A couple of days ago I mixed new dye concentrates as it is important to remix dye concentrates every 5 weeks or so to maintain full strength of the colours. As you can see, I mix only a ¼ to ½ cup of each colour so that my dyes are always fresh.

When I am ready to paint with the dyes, as I was today, I place 1 – 2 tsp of thickener (sodium alginate mixed with urea water) in a small container and add the same amount of the dye concentrate to it. As the thickened dyes doesn’t last as long as the liquid dye concentrates, I remix them every 5 days or more often if I run out. The yellow seems to run out before the other colours even though I thicken twice the amount of it. Check at DharmaTrading, for supplies and information about the dyeing process.

Just to warm up, I decided to paint 6 small images for cards. The details will come with the free motion stitching after the pieces are washed. I have tested this fabric before, having been given it by my cousin. It doesn’t take the dye as well as the fabric I buy from Dharma Trading and I was actually going to give it away but then I got such rave reviews about the texture of this fabric in the pieces I dyed previously, that I decided to give it another chance. Today I was sure to add a couple of layers of dye, letting it soak in between layers. This may help to keep the colours strong. Dyeing it a second time would also give added vibrancy. Currently the piece is curing at 70 degrees for at least 24 hours before rinsing.  I'll let you know what happens.

Guest Textile Artist - Jayne Himsl



Wall Hanging by Jaynie Himsl

I was so pleased to see this textile piece this week! This wonderful wall hanging was designed and created by Jaynie Himsl, a Canadian Textile artist. I am pleased to say Jaynie used one of my hand (dye) painted fabrics along with 2 complementary blocks she drew with Inktense pencil crayons.

Jaynie does other lovely work depicting the prairies. You can see some of her work here: http://www.fibreartnetwork.com/artists-gallery.php?artist=234&image=286

Painting T-Shirts

 

A day of play today. What fun G and I had!  Rarely do I paint with fabric paints, preferring to paint with thickened dyes but today I wanted to try some fabric painting techniques on T shirts.

Golden Paints produce a produce GAC 900 that is a fabric medium to use with acrylic paints. http://www.goldenpaints.com/technicaldata/fabric.php
After drying the shirts will need to be heat set with an iron 3-5 minutes on medium heat. To start, a plastic bag was slipped inside the shirt to keep the paint from going through to the back. Acrylic paints in the colour scheme I chose were squeezed out on a palette along with the addition of white acrylic paint and the GAC. The GAC 900 is to be mixed with the paint 1 : 1 and it really helped to spread the paint on the T shirt. It is important to think of placement of the images on a T shirt and helpful to hold the shirt up once in awhile to yourself while looking in a mirror.
On the white shirt, after painting a flower or two in the positive, I pencilled in another flower and painted around at least some of it to create a negative image. Leaves can be done this way too. It really adds interest to have positive and negative shapes.

The Golden Paints website also gives guidelines for caring for your painted clothing, but mostly it was suggested to turn the shirts inside out for washing. Hand washing was preferred, but I know that won't be happening with these shirts.  

If any of you have experience with this technique I would be pleased to share more information about it. Can you let me know how well they have stood up over time?