Comparison

Been doing some soy wax batik and I realized that I haven't done it for quite a while. Since we no longer get a newspaper delivery, I had to scrounge newspapers for the ironing out process. I tried using a boiling water bath and it did work, but it took a long time, and was very messy. Good thing I did it outside because there were lots of wax drips.

So the good thing about soy wax is that it is soluble in water. This can also be a drawback, particularly if you want to get the "crackle" that is so much a mark of batik. Getting a good crackle involves immersing the waxed cloth in a dyebath. Soy wax will dissolve in a dyebath. Except now that I think about it, it wasn't all that easy to get the wax off in cool water, so maybe this is something to experiment with.

Anyhow, I was trying to get a crackle effect on this piece, so after doing one layer with a tjap and getting the sort of leafy effect, I covered the piece with wax, cracked it, and painted on diluted paint, working it into the cracks. I ironed this piece to get the wax out and since I knew that a lot of the paint was sitting on top of the wax, I figured that as the wax melted through the fabric, the paint would get deposited. Here is the piece after ironing. It's stiff as a board.

After washing in hot water and detergent, the fabric softened up and some of the heavier crackle disappeared, although not nearly as much as I was afraid it would. It's a little bit more subtle, if you can call red on orange and yellow "subtle".

I really like this second piece. I applied the wax with a paint brush and you can see the brush marks, sort of. I applied the first layer of wax onto white fabric, then painted on dilute light green paint. After that dried, I brushed on another layer of wax, crumpled the fabric to crack the wax, then applied a darker green shade of paint. I think that this was one of the pieces that I boiled the wax to remove it, then washed it. Here is the before picture.

And the after. It looks like the color has lightened up a bit, but that may be the result of less than expert scanning. I really like the painterly effects and the randomness and how the colors blend into each other. And the edges where the color falls off - love that.

Right now in the studio I'm making some small pieces to put in a sales gallery along with a show. My group New Image is having a show at the Lorton Workhouse Gallery in Lorton, Virginia. It's titled Yard Art at the Yard and is an interpretation of the various uses of the word Yard. My pieces in the show are done with leaf prints, so I'm making some small (5"x7") pieces mounted on painted stretched canvas using more leaves. As I'm making these, I'm getting some small pieces from cuttings that I thought I would make into those Art Cards, ACEO - Art Cards, Editions and Originals. They're really small - 2.5" x 3.5", the size of a baseball trading card. When I get them finished, I'll post some pictures.

Fabric - more soy wax

Thanks for the birthday wishes.

More results from soy wax batik sessions. This design was done using a tjap that I got from DharmaTrading. I always start off with too much wax and my first impressions are a little blobby and then they get more delicate, sort of. The original color on this fabric was green and I painted over it with red. Idaho Beauty asked about the fabric paint I use. I'm not real particular so I use whatever I have available. Mostly it's Setacolor and paint from ProChem (I think they call it textile ink). I dilute it with water until it's about the consistency of milk. I want to be able to spread it easily and not have it change the hand of the fabric. I also always wipe any excess off the wax impressions because the paint will work its way through the wax and into the fabric. This water solubility of the wax is both a plus and a minus.


A combination of odd things from Home Depot and a kitchen utensil were used to make these impressions. The fabric was orange-ish and the paint green-ish.


A kitchen utensil that looks like a sieve with a handle, I would guess it's for scooping solid stuff out of liquids. It's bowl shaped so that I don't get a clear impression, which I like alot. The small grid is a drain cover from the hardware store made out of pvc. You can use any material that will hold heat long enough to keep the wax melted.


And this is the drop cloth that was underneath the fabrics. These always turn out to be so cool!


Yesterday was my family birthday celebration. My daughter made me this Kitty Litter cake and I think it's pretty funny. The brown things are Tootsie Rolls. When they're heated they get pliable and can be shaped. The cake is a combination of white cake and yellow cake and some green food coloring. It involves baking the cake, crumbling it up, and putting it into the (new and unused) pan. And supplying a scoop (also new and unused). The kids thought it was so cool to be eating this gross thing, especially my almost 8 year old grandson. Must have been thought up by the mother of a little boy.



Today I created a Facebook page. I'm not sure whether it will turn out to be a good networking device or a gigantic time sink. Come visit.