Auction Commission: No Turning Back

A little something about who I am as an artist and what has affected my attitudes about my art.

When I was 10 years old, my father had me apprenticed to a Master glassblower, William Burke, who (allegedly) taught renown glass artist Milon Townsend of New York City. I learned how to manipulate glass using the torch technique, with solid Pyrex rods and hollow tubing. By the age of 12, I had my first craft show in a cow field under a tent. My dad built me a demonstration table out of old pallets from a neighboring field. By the age of 14, I was sick and tired of mass production. I just wanted to be an artist. Only to create. Not to produce, and reproduce.

Because of that, I have only created artwork to please myself. If I love it, I keep it. If I hate it, nobody will ever see it. If I like it, I tend to give it away. I have never really sold anything since my glassblowing days. Not that I haven't had offers, but the price was never high enough to relinquish.

The Tipperary batik is, technically, my first "commission." Not that I am being paid, mind you, but rather I am doing it for someone other than myself, and very proudly for the benefit of Global Sighthound Rescue. It's hard. If I don't like it, I just can't throw it into the pile of my rejects, and, if I love it, I DO have to let it go. Keep in mind, I only taught myself to batik almost 2 years ago, and I have so much more yet to learn.

This batik will be the first one in which I have done the background first, and the first batik in which I will be doing a double dye bath. The problem with doing the background first is that you have to keep in mind that the background should not overwhelm the foreground. And yet I challenged myself by choosing to draw a busy blanket upon which to put the subject, a black greyhound, surrounded by detailed and colorful chocolate wrappers. The batik is at risk of losing a strong focus on its subject, with the busyness and color of the background acting as major distractors.

Whomever determined that problem solving occurs during R.E.M. sleep is a genius! I find myself waking during the early hours in the morning with Eureka! moments on how to approach my batik conundrums.

The dark subject and the colorful chocolate wrappers means I have to have a relatively neutral background. But I don't have to sacrifice the retro pattern of the blanket. I have to de-emphasize it. One of the main elements of my batiks is the "comic-bookish" dark outlines. For the background, I am going to forgo that element.

This is also the first time that I actually have to have a recipe for exact colors. That means I have to do intensive color studies while noting down the formula in order to recreate the color on a larger scale. To actually measure my dye concentrations, I had to create a miniscule measuring device. I used Sculpey and a golf tee to create it. Again, LOVE those Eureka! moments!

I started with a soft wash on the blanket to eliminate any distracting white highlights. I free-painted (painted with no wax resist) the retro pattern with my chosen color palette. Next, I waxed out everything that will will NOT be the warm, mid-tone brown of the blanket that will be accomplished using the first of two dye baths.

Tomorrow will reveal the results of my choices. There is no turning back now!!

Currently, I am visiting my twin sister in Colorado for a month. (I am from New York state) She has graciously taken time off from work to teach me stained glass, and for me to teach her batik. I sketched the following image for her to start with, and tomorrow, we begin batik in earnest!

**SIGH** Sadly, I love this sketch too!!

Auction Commission: Introducing Tipperary

In April of 2012, Global Sighthound Rescue ran an artist auction offering the services of seven artists to create a "portrait" of each winner's pet. The mediums used by each artist varied greatly: linocut print, ceramic sculpture, paper mache, soft sculpture, graphite portrait, painted ceramic pottery, and myself... batik.

The winner of my auction is Susan who has owned many dogs, from many different breeds, as well as cats. Obviously a woman with a lot of love in her heart to share with so many. The process of choosing WHICH pet to feature in the batik caused Susan much uncertainty.

Initially, Susan told me she had a greyhound who is a trancer. Trancing... what the heck is that!! To my surprise, some greys seem to go into a trance when they brush their back against low hanging branches or bushes. They may actually stand motionless for several minutes with their eyes glazed over as they seem to be feeling the touch of the branches.

In reference to this behavior, Susan asked me if I could do a sketch of her three greyhounds peering out of a liliac bush. I began with a simple sketch and found, though I loved the idea of using brilliant colors, that the dog's beautiful face was getting lost in the busyness of the liliacs. To add two more greyhounds to this didn't seem like an option.

After looking through many pictures, we finally agreed that Tipperary would be the subject of the batik. Susan comments about her heart dog, "Much as I love the others, he (Tipperary) was and always will be Mommy's favorite."

To create the perfect composition that shows the pet's personality in addition to his visage, I had to find out more about who Tipperary was.

Tipperary was Susan's first greyhound
whom passed away in 2005 at age 11.

Tipperary was a lovely black male greyhound with gorgeous, engaging eyes. Susan wrote me "He was not a needy or demanding dog, but he always made it clear that I was very important to him. He watched me wherever I went, but did not have to follow me everywhere. It's probably why I liked his eyes so much." THAT statement gave me my focus!

Despite the fact that Tipperary was afraid of thunderstorms, fireworks, balloons, and black plastic bags, he was better known for being a precocious scamp.

Susan wrote, "He did seem to have a taste for the written word. He ate many newspapers and books through the years. He also was a manic chocoholic. When we visited my parents, he found and ate selectively from her chocolate stash in the bedroom. She learned to hide her chocolate better whenever he came to visit." THOSE statements gave me my composition.

Since then, I have found the reference materials I need to convey my idea, sketched out an image (that I love and whose subsequent batik I will sadly not be able to keep), done a color study, transferred the image onto the fabric ( I choose a lovely French cotton with Snails embedded in it), and I am now at the beginning stages of waxing.

Tipperary has such fine white lines in his black face that I decided to try using my Ukranian Easter Egg tjanting tool, which I have never used before in a batik (see white areas in the closeup image around the eye). It was working fabuously until I realized that these lines would have to be redone during each subsequent wax removal and reapplication. It was best if I had started with the background.

Traditionally in my work process, I always underplan and wait to see how the subject of the batik turns out before I decide what kind of background "speaks" to me and what colors are appropriate. Now I am forced to work in reverse. I decided that a retro pattern seemed to suit the theme of this batik, Tipperary's avid chocoholicism.

Given many of these factors, I have entitled this batik "Chocolate, Snails, and Puppy Dog Tails... That's what Tipperary is Made Of"

Lesson 4: Understanding Chemicals

The chemicals of batik have been the hardest to understand, and for the painterly batiks that my group are doing, I have had to make a great many errors to discover perfect solutions to uncommon situations. If there is any lesson you should read about, this is the most important one.

The most important chemical in the batik process is soda ash, a fixative that bonds the dye to the fiber. Dye must be 'fixed' (made permanent) with Soda Ash on cotton and other cellulose fibers. It's a mild alkali that enables the reaction between the dye and the cellulose fibers at lower temperatures, causing them to “become one.” How much you use is normally a function of the amount of water, not the amount of fabric or dye.

I have ready many books on batik, and every one of them has instructed presoaking your fabric in a mixture of soda ash and water and then letting it dry completely dry before sketching your image. When the dye is painted on, it reacts with the Soda Ash in the fabric.
 
This technique is fine if you are creating simple "blocky" images or stamps of traditional batik that don't require intensive painting, but I have found that the more detailed painting I do leaves a stain caused by diffusion. The wet areas of dye seem to push the sodium of the soda ash to the border and leave and unsightly stain. Stay tuned and you will learn a very important simple trick.

BASE SOLUTION: Cold Batch Chemical Water

Hand painting on fabric requires a thickened solution that slows bleeding, allowing you greater control of color placement and blending. First, you need to create the base solution for the other chemicals that will be added later. Cold batch chemical water is the base for mixing dyes for the purpose of handpainting and can be stored in a refrigerator for up to a month. It basically contains water and Urea. Urea extends the drying time of the fabric so that the dye has time to bond with the fibers, generally 6 hours for pastels or silk OR 12-24 hours for deeper shades and brighter colors

Cold Batch Chemical Water Recipe:

Mix together ¾ cup Urea (dissolve in a little hot water if necessary) with 1 quart water. (NOTE: In this image, I am only making a quarter batch because that is all I need during my month long sojourn with my twin sister in Colorado.)

THICKENING SOLUTION: Sodium Alginate

Before handpainting, the chemical water needs to be thickened. The thicker the solution, the less it will bleed along the fabric fibers, allowing you to control the flow and actually paint or print onto the fabric.

Thickener is generally made from sodium alginate, which is cheaper but requires mixing in a blender, some time to thicken, and has a yellowish cast that may skew color perception slightly (from what you see when wet to what you see when dry). I used to buy a pre-made clear mixture called Superclear from Dharma Trading Company, but supply shortages on alge has made this difficult to get in the United States. If this is a concern, you can buy a higher grade food alginate used in molecular gastronomy at Amazon.

Sodium Alginate Recipe:

In a blender, combine 1 cup chemical water and 2 Tablespoons sodium alginate powder. Mix at low speed for 10 minutes. Refrigerate for several hours or overnight until thickened. Store in the refrigerator. If you want a thicker solution (especially for screen printing), add more sodium alginate.

SODA ASH: ***The BIG Secret***

After my initial failure with staining caused by diffusion, I decided to try adding in a little bit of soda ash when I mixed the dyes and thickened solution together. That was a failure. It was difficult to control the ratio of liquid to soda ash to get the correct reaction with the fiber.

Sadly, I do my best thinking when I am asleep (and might benefit from sleeping a bit more often). In a moment of inspiration, I jumped out of bed in a EUREKA moment. The soda ash reacts with the dyes!!!! The solution is to add the soda ash to the thickened solution where it remains inactive at the proper concentration until the dye is combined with it.

Soda Ash Recipe:

Roughly ½ teaspoon soda ash per ½ cup of thickened chemical water is needed. If you don't use enough, the dye won't yield full strength.

When mixed with the dyes, the soda ash fixer activates and has a limited shelf life of 3-5 hours before it becomes half as effective. Blacks exhaust even faster. Only small quantities of dye solutions are needed for painting.

Add a squirt of thickened chemical water (or however much you will need for your image) into a mixing cup. Dip the tip of a paintbrush into the powdered dye and mix a small quantity of it into the thickened chemical water. Test out the color on a scrap piece of cloth or paper towel. Try to go a shade or two darker than you want for your finished result. Use slightly more for blacks, bright reds, and bright blues. Smaller dye to water ratio yields pastel hues.

MISCELLANEOUS CHEMICALS:
Calsolene oil is used in the final deep water dye bath to break the surface tension of the water and allow the dye to dissolve better.

Synthrapol is a wetting agent that helps wool fibers to open up to absorb water for the acid dye process. However, for cold water batik Synthrapol is used as a soap to encapsulate loose dye particles and prevent accidental dye spots when washing your batik before boiling the wax out.

The next lesson I will present will be about different techniques in painting with thickened dyes.