Dyeing Bright

I've been playing with mixing dye colours this weekend. I've made lots of swatches with the recipe noted on them so I can achieve the same colours again. I used Procion dye in cyan, yellow, magenta, black, chocolate and lime. Different colours can be achieved with the addition of more water or the addition of another dye colour.

I tried mixing some dye colour into matt and gel acrylic mediums and then printing with them on the Gelli plate. Once the prints were dry I washed a second colour over the top.

The Fabric of Space - Textile Art

If we could only see, what would energy, gravity and dark matter look like? What shapes do the mysterious webs holding our universe together form? How does matter and energy distort and bend the fabric of space and time?

I've finally finished with my melted circles (see previous post). They are mounted on poles in a 3D wave formation. I added more circles with rays of golden hot glue exploding from them. The piece is called "The Fabric of Space".

Primordial Soup - Textile Art

My 3D melted pink creation from the previous post now has a background and is ready to hang. I painted and printed on black Lutradur with ordinary and metallic acrylic paints, and then free machined the piece onto some bright blue acrylic felt. I used the soldering iron to cut and shape the edges and the heat gun to distress the background allowing the blue to show through.

The 3D pink cells were melted on with the soldering iron. I have named the piece Primordial Soup. 3.8 billion years ago life began. Cells divided and connected together in new ways to form our most ancient ancestors. How beautiful the evolution of nature.

Window Sketches

Today I did a little "on location" sketching at a ruined abbey.

Rainbow Dyes

I used up some spare procion dyes on these cotton and silk fabrics. The fabrics were soaked in soda ash solution for a while and were still damp when the dye was applied so it would spread and merge into different colours. I scrunched the fabric in a shallow tray and poured various colours onto different parts and left them to bleed into each other.

Dye Mixing

This weekend was fabric dying with procion dyes at the Embroiderers' Guild. We had only 4 dye colours, magenta, turquoise, yellow and black but we experimented and mixed to get all these different colours. I used a range of fabrics including cotton, silk, cheesecloth, silk fibres and cotton threads.

I have a few more fabrics soaking in the leftovers. Come back soon to see how those come out.

Collage Crazies

This week I have been having fun with collage and paint pens. Most of the collage pieces came from magazines except the girl in the page above which I drew myself.