More Samples

Overdyed silk fabrics, using only natural dyes. Some of the base colors are yellow - weld, some are pink - cochineal. Madder lac was used for the overdye.

Sample

Painted with natural dyes - silk fabric.

Sample

This piece was painted using natural dyes, Madder Lac, Chlorphyll, Logwood Grey, Indigo, and Osage Orange. After it's done curing, and has been washed, I will go back into the piece with pigments on the bottom portion, and maybe add some more Osage Orange to the top to make the sky look more orange.

Parting Shots

This is the last picture my digital camera took, and since it no longer wants to work it'll probably be the very last one. Ode to a digital camera that I loved so!

Lighting

I forgot to say about shooting video, WOW the lights are bright, we used my lights, I have two photography lights and I really need two more, but it's amazing the amount of lumens in the room. And it was pretty quite as we shut everything off, except for me of course ;-)

But I thought I should say, for those concerned cause I know you'll ask, no we didn't use the ceiling lights (fluorescents) we used real tungsten lamps.

Video Update

Well we filmed half of the video tonight, I'll be filming the other half tomorrow night, it's really weird having my faced/mug filmed, no make-up I'm highly allergic, so in the finished product I'll probabaly look like a vampire. Oh well there's always the next video.

I can't wait to see the finished product, should be interesting.

Sink Area of wet studio

Sink Area of wet studio.

Wet Studio Another View

I have since cleaned out the junk, but here's another view of my wet studio.

Black Gutta gone wrong

Gone very wrong to be exact, it's Pebeo's black gutta that never really sat up right, which leads me to suspect that it has a short shelf life. I recouped the piece, barely. I'll add more colors to it later. Madder-Lac, Cochineal, Indigo.

Dressing the studio part 4

I'm going to leave the fabric off of the bins in the corner, it's too much. In fact I think I may take a piece or two off of the design wall, break it up a bit.

The Studio

Well part of it anyway. This is the west end you are looking at, the room is essentially 13 x 26 feet, well if you don't count for all of the space lost by cabinets, shelves, and counters.

Dressing the Studio Part three

The corner without the fabric hanging on the bins.

Dressing the Studio Part Deux

Ok here's what it looks like now. And I even hid the corner that was a bit unsitely. I will be hauling all of the other stuff out, that looks junky, later. I have to finish making "in progress" samples first.

Dressing the Studio

We're shooting video here Wednesday night and I need to "dress" the studio. Which means cleaning all of hte junk out of here and decorating it with all of my art work.

Auditioning fabrics to go on the design wall, art cloth I have created, in addition to getting all of the samples staged - meaning having the samples for each technique done in stages.

Here's a pic of my design wall, hiding all of the not so pretty crates, hey you do what you have to do sometimes. The upside is I now have a place to hand my art cloth from.

The indigo is dried now it has a nice mottled look to it, it'll be a bit lighter after it's been washed. I will need to add more dye to the bottom third of the piece as it's too light. I may chose to add this as stitching instead of more dye. 

Sheet Pattern 

Shower curtain 

Untitled it's still wet. I used Instant Indigo, Logwood Purple, Quebracho Green, Chestnut, and a very bad batch of Cochineal - mold does bad things to the red dyes. Silk Crepe de Chine and Gutta Resist. It needs to dry yet, I just got the last batch of blue onto the fabric. 

Pepper 

Fresh Air Part Two

Little pretties in my garden, I planted several hundred of these one year and have no idea what happened to them. Chipmunks???