When Art Projects Go Wrong--Silk Scarf Mistake

     Recently, a silk scarf I was working on took a bad turn. All artists (I imagine) experience this on occasion with a project. Sometimes, there is a way to fix the situation and move on; sometimes it cannot be saved. In this case, I  could not fix the mistake, but was able to make the not-quite-ruined scarf reusable.

First stage--the background

Background from the other end

     The two photos of a scarf on a stretcher show the intended background for the piece. Painting wet-on-wet on a blank white scarf, I had made a shadowed pale aqua and blue ground on which I planned to paint large tropical leaves in various green hues. My original patterns--see photo of the design for one end of the scarf--were already sketched on heavy paper. The next step was to "draw" the design outlines on the scarf with gutta, a rubber-based resist. That's when it went wrong.

Design outline for one end of the scarf

The gutta and applicator 

     The gutta is applied with a small squeeze bottle through a metal tip with a small opening (see photo). The metal tips come in various sizes, and I think my mistake was using one with a medium opening at the top (it's still really tiny). The gutta flowed too fast and puddled, covering areas I intended to leave open. Every area covered with gutta would resist the French silk dyes and remain the background color. Using the metal tip with the smallest opening would have produced a thinner line of gutta and may have prevented the mess I ended up with. In some designs, this would not have mattered much; the design simply would have looked a bit different from what I'd intended. In this case, the leafy fronds on the left would have had undesirable aqua patches.

The gutta outlines, with messy overflow

     Even when the gutta is still wet, it cannot be wiped off, so I let the piece dry. What to do? I decided to start over and used the same dye blends in the same concentration as in the first scarf (glad I keep notes on my colors). Making no effort to duplicate the original background, I painted on the pale aqua and swirled in some blue. If all goes well this time, I hope to post the new, corrected version in the future.

Close-up of the messiest area

     Once all dye has been painted on, the finishing steps for a scarf (when using French silk dyes) are: steam setting the piece for an hour or more (I do several at once), soaking any scarves with gutta in naphtha to remove the resist (dry cleaning also works), then washing and pressing the scarves. 

     As an experiment, I soaked the original scarf in naphtha even though the dyes were not set. What's the worst that can happen?, I thought--the color will wash out or drastically fade, but the scarf might be reusable for another project. To my surprise, the color faded much less than expected. Now, I have two versions of an aqua/blue medley background to work with. Stay tuned.

Question of the day: Along with success stories, isn't it sometimes helpful to hear about a day that things went wrong for someone else?

Ocean-Inspired Aqua, Blue, and Purple Hand-painted Silk Scarf

An 11" x 60" one-of-a-kind, hand-painted silk scarf

     This ocean-inspired aqua, blue, and purple hand-painted silk scarf, 11" x 60", was a delight to paint. I used French-
style silk dyes and began with diluted blue and aqua to paint the large middle area in pale shades, blending well. Just as a clear sky shades slightly from a truer blue appearance overhead to a more aqua look nearer the horizon, I used blue in the very center and shaded to aqua further from center. 

     Of course, I was not trying to make a realistic ocean and sky picture, but hoped to suggest them. In the second stage, I used stronger (much less diluted) hues and began to work on the very ends. The mottled areas result from liberal doses of kosher salt--salt draws wet dye up to create random jagged patterns. What is the area meant to represent? you may ask. I had some thoughts, but mostly wanted some variety in the look of the ends of the scarf. People who have seen it each have their own ideas: currents deep down, the ocean bottom, coral, the movement of sea creatures. Take your pick; it's fun to imagine what shape and texture could represent.

Seen from another angle 

     Working up from the ends, I laid in wavy strips of various shades of blue, aqua, and purple, along with some deep rose. I had some of these shades premixed and ready; others resulted from the colors overlapping and mixing on their own or from adding subsequent tones over the first layer of color. 

     When I approached the "sky" area, I used gutta as a resist (more information here) to draw wiggly outlines for a suggestion of currents and waves (click on any photo to enlarge). Once the gutta had dried, I could continue to create undulating watery tones--using gradually lighted versions of the colors. Since French silk dyes are transparent up to seven layers of color, I could add and modify any of the hues until the result felt right.

The earlier silk scarf, made in my class

     When I originally learned the art of silk painting from Donna Kassab at the John C. Campbell Folk School (see posts about the class here), one of my first silk scarf creations (and still a favorite) was a 22" square ocean-inspired piece. That design sparked the long scarf shown in this post. The square piece looks odd in the photo because it had just come off the stretcher on which we paint on silks (it doesn't actually have a scalloped hem). My favorite aspects of French-style silk painting are the intense colors and the element of unpredictability in the process. Every creation feels like a discovery.

Question of the day: What colors and color combinations are your favorites?