Inspired by John Piper

This week I went to a Jenny O'Leary workshop at Littleheath Barn Studio.   It's not often that workshops use architecture for the inspiration so of course I was going to sign up.

I found some John Piper images online of his paintings of Venice - where else!!

Jenny introduced us to a variety of tools and ideas for a more experimiental and user-friendly way of doing batik.

Firstly we coloured our fabrics with ink.

I added pattern with oil pastel rubbings

I drew with the oil pastel

I added more inks - this time dark brown and blue - before bleaching some of it back with Milton.

These pieces are too dark for me but there are possibilities.  I may well cut the fabric up and collage it back together.

I have learned some new techniques and I know how to do it again to have a more muted colour palette.

Thanks for be with me today
Bernice

Batik experiments

At the Art Textiles group on Thursday, Liske had lots of ideas that we could try.  Sadly I had arrived without any oomph!  It seemed to leak out of the car during the 25 minute journey from home!!!

However, one of the ideas roused a little bit of curiosity.  I'm so glad it did because I really love some of the results I got.

Liske had a hot wax pot - actually an electic grill - and various tools including a cork, brushes, and a large cookie cutter.

This piece was originally splattered with acrylic paint.  I think it was probably newsprint that I had put under another piece of work I was doing.  I put the hot wax on and when that was set I put watercolour paint over it.  When that was dry I repeated the exercise.  With each of the pieces once everything was dry I ironed it between newspaper to remove the wax.

This piece was a part of a map with tissue paper glued on top.  I scratched into the blobs of wax to reveal the layer below but the scatches were not significant enough for the paint to bleed through.

On this paper I collaged some text and some music and tissue paper before adding the wax and the yellow paint.  Another layer of wax was added and then the turquoise paint.

This was an acrylic paint monoprint to which I added the wax.  I used black acrylic ink over the top.

This is a piece of thin white cotton material.

And this was the paper underneath the fabric where the wax and some of the paint went through.  I then added some more paint as there was quite a lot of white.

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice