Snow gum bark

Sorry about yesterday, folks, the hubby came home from town with a nasty cough and headache, so I didn't get onto the net, but today has been a great day for creating!
I have been wanting to have a go at screen printing for a while and I decided today was just the day.  I need some fabric for the bark on my snow gums in the landscape I am working on.

Remember this sketch?  At present I am working on the leafy layer, but will be needing some tree bark soon.

Here's my stylised sketch of some snow gum bark.  It's very bright, isn't it?  But for anyone out there who has never seen a snow gum, here, here and here are a few links that will show you that my sketch is actually a little subdued.

I am not using a store bought screen, just a piece of organza stretched on a frame, then covered around the edges with duct tape.  It worked really well for me. Kerr Grabowski, in Adventures in surface design, said it works ok for most things.
Here are my home made bits and pieces on my table wich has been lined with some old fabric..

The printing boards are made from polystyrene sheets cut from a box, with batting and fabric added on top.

 I started out by laying a paper stencil down, and pulling some yellow and brown down it.

The result was interesting, but not quite what I wanted, but I could see some interesting streaks where the colours went together.  (You will notice I am just using some scrap floral fabric), so I got rid of the stencil and went with lots of colours.

I think my textile paint really needed to be thinned a bit, as I had trouble getting it on as you can see.

But this was the result and I was really pleased with the textures created by the different colours streaking.
I made two of these (actually four, because the fabric was two screens long) and here are the final results

I was really quite pleased with these, and went on to make two more slightly different ones

This one had a colour range that is totally over the top, but I loved it and the streaky texture.

This one was more in keeping with my colour range for my tree, but a little toned down for the less bright parts of the tree.
The next thing I wanted to try was using pastels.

 On this piece of fabric, I screened with the leftover paint from my waste (just because I liked the browny colour of it) and then put a texture plate underneath the fabric (simply made by drawing lines with hot glue on cardboard)

The lines that came up are from drawing a square pastel over the texture plate.  I can see with a bit more fiddling, this technique might be useful for making lines.  Next time, I will try it with string glued to the card to get more consistent lines.

 The next thing I tried was drawing with the pastels on the screen.  Above is a screen with lines drawn in pastel,  It transferred well, when I squeegeed some extender across it, but I couldn't help but get my fingers dirty.  As the fabric was wet, I just hoed in and added more pastel by hand.

After this I dispensed with the screen and did some playing around with pastels.

Here are two long skinny bits of fabric ironed onto freezer paper and then drawn on with pastels.

Then I just painted over them with diluted textile medium and a great big brush. Now that the fabric was wet, it fell off the freezer paper and needed to be pinned, but I found that the pastel really went on well, so I added some more.

This reminded me of when we were at kindergarten and we used those hard faber-castel chalks on wet cartridge paper, so...

I just wet some newspaper and had a go...and I really liked it.  When the paper is wet, the pastel goes on quite thick and some colours are a little opaque (black and white), whilst others (bright red) are a little transparent.

The newspaper was very thin and fragile, but I liked the semi transparent texture.  I think I might have to try this out with my next batch of fabric paper.

So all in all, It was a very productive day. I do find, that when I play around like this I am more likely to find things I like and will use again.  Serendipity.

There's a lot more experimenting I need to do with the screen, but also with the wet fabric and dry media.  I wonder if......

Creating silk paper and other fibre films Method 2 - Glue method Part 3

Creating silk paper and other fibre films 

Method 2 - Glue method Part 3

In this blog, you will see that not all experiments are created equal, sometimes they don't work.  This is why they are called experiments.  This one certainly stretched my predicting ability and I changed tack several times.  But in the end, even if the piece is not worth continuing with, there is still something to learn, so enjoy watching me struggle!

 

Here I have laid a cloth down and am adding leaves from a previous project, made from various fabrics.

Here are all the leaves laid down.

Top cover added.

Soapy water added - oops, too much.

 

Used a towel, to blot up all the water.  Well and truly wet now!

Rolled up the layers, which moved quite a bit (now, I know this was because the fabrics were too thick for this method)

Squeezed in diluted medium several times, which only resulted in moving more of the fabric about, because diluted medium is not strong enough for these fabrics

So, mark 2, I put all of the leaves on baking paper and painted with undiluted medium.  You need to paint both sides of the fabric, so it will bond to those already there.  That is, you need to begin adding medium from the first scrap, piece by piece!

Then I made the mistake of being in a hurry.  I tried ironing between the baking paper, but this affected the Medium and it created a film on top of the leaves.  Next time I will know not to do this - unless of course I am looking for a milky film for some reason.

This what the final piece looked like

Nothing is ever a waste of time in my laboratory lol.  The fabric is stiff, but stitcable (just).  And in working through this experiment, I have devised a few other ways to achieve this type of fibre film with fabrics that are a little thick in places. And I have thought of a few more combinations for the medium method as well - lucky you!

So expect to see these leaf scraps again in another episode.  (Much later!)

Creating silk paper and other fibre films Method 2 – Glue Method Part 1

Creating silk paper and other fibre films   
Method 2 - Glue method

This is actually a group of methods which are closely related because they all use a glue or bonding agent to bind the fibres together.  It is very commonly used, particularly because of the availability of silk rovings, bereft of their sericin, and the advent of a wide range of textile media, acrylic gloss media and other bonding agents.  It has also expanded the range of fibres which can be used to almost limitless possibilities.   This method, with many variations is covered in the following references;
1, 2, 3, 4, to 14.  (Click on the "References I use" page at top right of blog)

Today's sample is going to be made from hand dyed mulberry silk tops.

First, I have put down the bottom layer of tulle for this sample.  Newspaper is not neccessary for this method and you will see that I get rid of it in a few pictures.

My first layer of silk tops.  As you can see, itis much easier to align the fibres with tops, rather than some of the other fibres which have not been processed.

Here is the next layer, in the opposite direction.  You can add things either between two layers, or at this stage and then add more tops.  It all depends on how thick you want your silk paper to be.

Here I am laying down the top piece of tulle.

In this variation of the method, you need to moisten the layers.  I used a few drops of detergent in water and a brush and wet both sides of the silk paper, turning it over to do so.

Blot dry with paper towel or something else absorbent.  Remove as much water as you can.

Here are the two mediums I happen to have on hand.  I used Jo Sonja's Textile medium for this sample.  You can also use watered down PVA at a pinch and many references for this method use cellulose paste or wallpaper paste.  I put a little medium into a small container, undiluted and mixed with a paint brush.

Above, applying undiluted medium to both sides of the silk paper.

Place on an applique sheet and dry. After drying, remove the tulle.  You can remove it easier before drying, but this may disturb the fibres, while removing the tulle after drying must be done with care, since the undiluted medium will stick.  Even though the piece looks very open and fragile, you will find that it is actually quite strong.  The only difficulty is peeling off the wispy bits, and I will talk about that in my next blog.

The picture above is a high resolution of the finished paper.

Although I am happy with the silk paper, and like the openness of this piece particularly, I find the weave structure to be a bit overpowering.  I think this is because of the colour differences between the two opposite layers. 

I was struck with how much like water this sample appeared here, but when the medium dried the colours became more intense and the structure more open. However, I can see that if  I made one side thicker than the other, or used some undyed tops on the "back" so that you were not looking through the paper at an open structure, it might help.

Of course, I will find a way around this in future blogs, so stay tuned.  I am not sure how many parts we will have on this method, because I have so many ideas to show you!