As I continue to explore the art of silk painting, each piece is a new adventure for me. Today I'd like to share a little "disaster turned delicious" story. It started on a very warm day... I was up on my rooftop studio dreaming of tropical waters and was inspired to paint a seascape.
As usual, I washed and stretched the silk, drew in the resist lines ands started painting. Swaying coral shapes poured onto my silk canvas and I simply could feel water all around me as I drew each line.. the day began in bliss.. Notice, on the far right hand side, the unpainted seaweed shapes were getting rather complicated to follow because of all the overlapping, so I thought, "Aha! I will just write in numbers with my magic fabric pen!" I was quite pleased with myself for being so clever. And so I did just that..wrote in my numbers. I then ran out of daylight, and had to stop.
When I came back to this project a week later, and started painting in the the green shades of the seaweed, to my HORROR, the "invisible" numbers I had written in did NOT disappear when painting! Notice my red circled area and extremely realistic face reacting to this point. :) Apparently when left sitting too long, invisible fabric pens get permanent! The rest of the piece was so pretty. I sat there kicking myself for thinking I had been SO clever. Arrgghh!
Then I had a thought. A while back, I bought a started kit of Lumiere metallic paints http://www.dharmatrading.com/html/eng/393621-AA.shtml?lnav=paints_kits.html that I had not had a chance to try yet. The only other time I used the metallic paints with a brush (not through a resist tube, was under the supervision of Olivia Batchelder (see my previous blog titled Black Silk Experiment) http://musesilkpainting.blogspot.com/2009/04/black-silk-experiment.html My hesitation from using them, was that I didn't want my scarves to become too stiff.. but in this case, I had to do Something!
And so I mixed a little gold with olive and covered each number with strokes of this metallic paint. I also mixed a sparkling royal purple metallic and added shimmering highlights to blue coral and even a few of the fish scales. It seemed as if those parts in the seascape were being hit by the sun through the water.. Ahhh *sigh of relief* Lumiere paints saved the day!
Voila! Here is the final finished piece, drying on the frame. And now I have to say, adding that slight metallic really gave this multicolor scarf the little extra "something" that it needed! My disaster had turned into a delicious new piece. As many artists will attest to, sometimes mistakes turn into the most interesting part. I'm just relieved this one worked out.. as there have been so many others that did not have this happy ending!
To shop this scarf and see it mocked up on my dress form, follow this link: http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=30891894
