Seasons greetings to all of my readers! During this season, I haven’t had much time to make any more scarves to upload because I’ve been in the seasonal rush like everyone else.
I learned last week that you should always follow your own directions. If you’ve read the steps for silk painting, you’ll see that step one is wash the silk before stretching to remove any leftover silk deposits. For the most part, I’ve been lucky in that I’ve only had issues a couple of times in small areas of the scarves. This last time it was the whole thing! It was as if it were coated in water repellent. Water just beaded on top. I really had to saturate it with water and work it in with my brush to get the color to set into the silk. Color would not flow to the edge of the resist like normal. I had to take a flat edged brush to scrub it in. Why, you might be wondering didn’t I just take it off the stretcher and wash it? Because I had spent three hours drawing the designs! Note: Do not use a sumi brush to scrub color into silk—use a nylon (watercolor) brush instead because it’s stronger. It will do the job and hold its shape.
If there’s a lesson to be learned it’s this: wash your silk before beginning your project. Each batch you receive might be slightly different from the previous. If you’ve been lucky and had perfect silk, there may come a time when you might not be so lucky—like when you have a short deadline for instance. With that in mind, I wish you smooth painting and success in all your artistic endeavors in the coming 2011.
Cheers,
Diane