sketch book

A couple of weeks ago, I visited the Yorkshire Sculpture Park to catch the final few days of the 'FABRIC-ATION' exhibition by Yinka Shonibare MBE.
The textiles he uses are brightly coloured and made into items of clothing often worn by headless figures.
Patterns printed on the fabric relate to the idea behind each figure. A figure given the title of 'Air' had the patterns of birds printed on the fabric, similar to the sketch above. On her head, was a weather-vane, its arrow topped by the metal die-cut owl landing to catch the mouse.
The story of the fabric is fascinating; Shonibare first became aware of it in Brixton Market, and it's lineage
' was fantastically rich in meaning and metaphor, as the wax-resist batik cloth originated in Indonesia but was copied and manufactured in Holland and Manchester and sold to the African market. Hence the material exemplifies trade routes and legacies of a colonial past.'
The fabric was gorgeous; vividly coloured, and with complex patterns. Shonibare uses layers and layers of them, in different items of clothing. To see such fabrics used in the formal outfits of an C18th footman, was laugh out loud funny! 
I had a lot to think about with this exhibition, not simply the ideas presented by Shonibare.
My work with textiles over the last few years has resulted in a narrowing of my palette; whereas once I would have splashed colour around in the way it is done on these fabrics. This has affected my paintings too; I'm not using as wide a range of colour as I used to. Here I was shown how effective the mass use of colour can be. Juxtaposition and contrast can create complexity; and also, joy. My friend Ann would've loved to see this exhibition.

sample #3

Batik; painted wax onto re-cycled silk, then 'drawn' into ('scrafito') using a compass point. Not very happy with the result, actually, though I like the technique. Like so much of textile techniques, batik is something one needs to practice and practice to get anything like a good result. And batik isn't the top of my preferred list. I'm trying to concentrate on the textile techniques I want to develop, in this C&G module, though there are things I need to include in my samples; such as batik.

Flour Resist 2

The completed dyed 'flour resist' experiment! Though some of the vividness of the colour has washed out. The black uprights were done in my textiles class, and 'drawn' by tjanting and wax. Then painted with black procion dye. I've yet to decide whether to do any embellishments on it.....for now I think I'll let it just sit.

Textiles

I haven't done any Batik for years; decades, in fact. So it was exciting to have a go again, after such a gap.

I asked if I could get straight on to use the tjanting, the tool with which you draw hot wax onto fabric. Once I simply made marks on the fabric, without thinking too much about it, and not being concerned about the blobs and drips that emerge from the tjanting tool, I relaxed. It was a case of getting into the flow of it, and seeing what happened!

The colours are more 'muddy' than I wanted, or intended; the fabric dye wouldn't soak into the cotton as easily as I imagined. In retrospect, I wish I'd dampened the cotton before dye-ing. I'll do that next time.

It meant that the dyes all merged into each other; thus creating the overall brown cast.

It's not quite finished yet; I've not ironed out the wax, so I'll see how it looks then. The turn-around time for working with fabrics, means that patience is needed as you wait for one process to complete, before you move onto the next. And throughout, you're never entirely sure how the fabric will come out. This is part of the magic of textile work; the end result is often a surprise.

This can of course be a pleasant surprise......or not!