Silky

  

Among the many ideas kicking around in my head, one of them I'll eventually get to is silk painting. Because of the nature of silk, in order to keep the colors from running together, the French serti technique uses a resist called Gutta that is not washed out of the silk but remains as a three dimensional texture.  It's often metallic colored, but it keeps the pools of paint in each section, giving a lovely stained-glass feel to the piece.  In case you don't know what I'm talking about, here is one Etsy shop with the kind of silk painting I'm referring to:  GABYGA.

I thought I'd try something like that for this piece.  I used Yupo paper, which is challenging because the paint puddles on it and evaporates rather than soaking in.  So in order to keep the colors separated I used Sakura Gelly Roll Souffle gel pens for the "resist".  Souffle gives a puffy, raised line that worked pretty well and didn't have any problem sitting on the yupo paper.  In between the lines I used the same ink I'd use on silk... Inktense.  I used the blocks (as pan watercolors, basically) dabbled into puddles of paint and moved around.  The nice thing about Yupo is that it's really easy to keep a wet edge, which is important working with Inktense because once it dries, you're stuck with it (maybe... Yupo seemed to make that a little more fluid).  Then I went back with the Inktense pencils for the lines and softened them a bit with water.  It was a fun process, actually.   

Lovely photography courtesy of Nicole Hanna

I've been racking my brain for a theme for the rapidly approaching 30 Paintings in 30 Days and yesterday it hit me (and then obsessed me... well, that happens):  my friends' Facebook pictures.  I have some friends who are amazing photographers and other friends whose family and pets I've wanted to paint for ages.  Well, this is a good excuse to do it.  So I put it out on Facebook and tagged some people, and the response was overwhelmingly positive and instantaneous.  

My friend Nicole Hanna is a woman of limitless talents who does a lot of the same things I do -- she takes breathtaking photographs, she is an artist herself, and not only makes the most amazing wire woven jewelry known to man, but shares her techniques with the world.  If jewelry interests you at all and you don't already know her (how do you not?), you should check out her website.

As soon as I had this idea her Facebook photos were one of the first to come to mind.  She does adorable photos of her cats and crazy cool stop-action water droplet photos.  But when I put up the post she shared this picture.  I still want to do one of her cats, but it's not September yet so I still can.  ;)

Anyway this photograph looks like a watercolor already so I thought I'd go a little surreal with it, with the silk painting technique, and I'm fairly happy with the results.

Actual silk painting is still in my future.   I can do it with Inktense, too.  And I think I'll try this on Yupo again, this time with some sort of metallic resist, and maybe on the transparent Yupo.  Mmm, ideas.  Thanks Painting Muse.