Silk Painting - Class 5

In this week's post, we'll work on making interesting effects using silk paint and salt.  Personally, this is one of my favorite ways to work with silk.  I love the random patterns that result!  This is a great way to get one of a kind background fabrics.

This is Lesson 5 of a silk painting series.  See the previous classes (beginning with Lesson 1) for background information and tutorials of needed skills.

Materials:
*silk scarf, washed and ironed
*Seta Silk paints
*foam brushes
*rock salt, coarse kosher salt, or coarse sea salt
*finely ground kosher or sea salt with no additives

1.  Stretch scarf onto painting frame.

2.  Pick three colors that you like - some colors work better together than others, when mixing.  If you avoid combining primary colors you'll most likely avoid getting browns.  If you don't mind browns, go for it!  In non-food use containers, cover bottom with paint and then add around the same amount of water.  Mix well.

 Put the two types of salt in two separate bowls.

3.  Working quickly (are you beginning to notice this is the speed of silk painting?!), add color to the scarf - work at blending the edges to minimize lines.  You'll have lines, but just try to minimize them.  Every so often, toss on a handful of the two types of salt.

4.  Keep working like this until the entire scarf is covered. 

You'll notice that the salt is beginning to absorb the paint.

At this point, I set the frame and scarf outside in the sun so that it'll dry quickly if I don't want a lot of white showing.  You'll see what happens if you leave the scarf to dry slowly in the last example.

When the scarf is dry, brush off all salt and iron to heat set.  After a day or two, wash and iron again.

This scarf was inspired by ocean colors and currents.  I also took it outside so it would quickly dry.

You can work randomly with where the salt is placed or you can do a more purposeful placement.  On this scarf, I painted a swirl in the center and then heavily placed both types of salt along that swirl.  I sprinkled on coarse salt sparingly around the rest of the scarf.

Because I had some ideas for using this as a background for a specific piece that involves embroidery, I wanted a little more white areas so I left it inside to dry.  The longer the piece takes to dry, the more paint will be pulled out by the salt and the more white you'll get.

I love the texture and motion this technique results in!

Next week we'll end this silk painting series with some shibori.

Happy Creating!  Deborah