A new leaf

Actually a lot of new leaves – blue ginkgo leaves – rescued the original disappointing dyeing outcome which you can see here.  I eyed it without much hope for a few weeks and then decided to act.  Just a yard of fabric, just some time spent and some dye used, nothing except my own satisfaction riding on the result.  The first thing I did was restencil the flowers with a resist, impossible, of course, to align the stencil perfectly with the existing flowers, but ultimately I liked the sort of off-register effect that it created.  Then using a very detailed mosaic stencil I went over the entire piece of fabric with thickened blue dye; you can really only see a hint of that in the background.  Next, I traced some actual ginkgo leaves and cut stencils of them which I used to screen print both in blue and blue-purple.  I followed that with screen printing on the Chinese stencil design that I used on the previous tank top. That color, Black Cherry, made the ginkgo leaves look too pale, so I printed on more in darker shades of the blue and blue-purple.  Voilà, it was finished, and I was more than pleased.  Of course, the process was not as effortless and straightforward as I just described.  Rather it was quite time-consuming and there were a lot of "oh nos!" along the way.  (See those little dots of blue?  They began as some accidental drips, but ended up, in my opinion, enhancing the design after I decided to sprinkle dots all over.)

 
And just a note, for anyone interested in screen printing, I've discovered a great material to use as stencil film, rather than freezer paper which has a finite lifespan.  I was at JoAnn Fabrics when I wondered if tablecloth vinyl would work.  And, yes, it does!  I purchased the thinnest vinyl which was less than $3 for a 60" wide yard, so it's a really cheap material, and the resulting stencil can be washed and re-used ad infinitum.  It's also extremely easy to cut; in fact, it's necessary to go very easy with the Exacto knife. I used it for the ginkgo leaves as well as recut the squiggly shapes in it, so I think it's a real find.

Illustration Friday -Haunt

This was an unfinished Illustration Friday from two years ago that seemed perfect for this week's theme.  What I kept of my original effort was the background landscape, photographed by me on a very foggy day at Queen Wilhelmina State Park in Arkansas, and the old sepia image of the lovely woman. All composed in Photoshop, of course. I used the Topaz Simplify filters on the landscape, and there are a couple of adjustment layers on it to further alter the tone, as there are also on the image of the woman.  The moths are from a collection of graphics I have had and used for many years: Broderbund ClickArt 200,000. It's a 14-disc set containing all sorts of images, fonts, photos, and which you can still buy on eBay and the like.  These are not hi-res images, but I still find them very useful for everything from making greeting cards to incorporating in montages. Underneath the landscape layer there's also a grey border layer on top of the white background layer. And that's it! 

Illustration Friday - Water

For this topic I photographed a glass of water from an odd angle on a sunlit window sill. I replaced the background with a photo of foliage and white flowers, using a box blur on one copy, setting the other copy below it to Hard Light at 10% which gave a slight imprint of the flowers on the blurred background. There are several copies of the glass, set to various blend modes to achieve the coloring and effect I wanted. On one copy of the glass I also used a tutorial from The Psyche Studios on how to turn a photo into a sketch.  The window sill has a texture layer from Lost and Taken.  And, lastly, I played around with creating water effects, trying out some of the many water tutorials on Photoshop Roadmap.  The two that I liked best were by Ivan Raszel and a very similar one from Iceflow Studios.  All in all, I have twenty-four layers on this simple-looking image.  I feel somewhat ambivalent about it but have decided that I did it, so I'm turning it in, so to speak...my October effort for Illustration Friday. 

Dye, dye again

Here's the reprise of the concept that went awry in my previous dyeing project.  I'm pleased with this result, and I think changing some of the elements improved my original idea as well.  I certainly came closer to achieving the color scheme I envisioned.

















To begin, I stenciled on the same flower I used in the previous try, this time using Jacquard Clear Water Based Resist, first time I had tried it.  A strangely oily and much more liquid product than Presist.  The bottle says that it is tintable with dye so I added a bit of the russet color I had made for an accent.  However, I decided that wasn't the effect I wanted, so I washed it out, leaving behind faint images.  Then I stenciled a different flower design with the resist, this time adding no color. You can just see their embossed-looking shapes in this photo.  Next I silk screened on the same green shapes, cut out of freezer paper, as before,  adding more blue to the green, mixed with print paste.


After that I tried another silk screen technique, using drawing fluid to trace a fairly simple design from Dover's Chinese Stencil Designs.  I simply printed out the design to the size I wanted, taped it to the screen and traced the design with a very fine brush.  Since it was the first time I had tried it, I had no idea of how thickly the drawing fluid needed to be applied to work its magic.  After the drawing fluid dried, I put a few spoonfuls of screen filler on my silk screen and pulled it across with the squeegee.  Once that dried, the drawing fluid is supposed to be washed out with cold water.  Yes, it worked; there was the design, ready to print! 

The final step was the violet background.  Since so much blue had washed out previously, I made my violet much more blue than I wanted and lighter than last try.   I applied it, mixed with print paste, with a small sponge roller.  The next day I thought it was just too blue and used an inexpensive hobby air brush to spray on more violet dye that was a bit less blue, although I really couldn't see much effect from that.  At this point the fabric was fairly wet, and I thought it possible that the resist-stenciled flowers had simply dissolved, as there was barely any visible trace of them.

After each step I let the dye cure overnight.  Finally I was ready to wash my fabric...   The resist-stenciled flowers slowly appeared, white against the violet background.  They did resist the violet, but did not entirely resist wherever the green shapes or the russet design was printed on top of them.  The faint russet-tinged images of the flowers I had originally stenciled and washed out are still there, adding a bit more complexity, which I like. The background lost a lot of blue as it had on my first time, so it came out about the color I wanted, if a bit lighter than I would have liked.  All in all, it was worth trying this again.  I can't wait to try other techniques, other colors.  This is so much fun!

Dye-sappointment

I saw it in my mind's eye: white flowers with rust centers, green shapes, a rust squiggle running through it all and a violet background.  I stenciled on the flowers with some of my remaining Presist (a water-based resist), using Procion MX Fiber Reactive dye mixed with print paste on the centers.  Then for the green shapes I finally utilized some of the silk screens Mr C kindly made for me a couple of years ago.  So easy!   I cut the shapes out of freezer paper, used a bit of masking tape to adhere the stencils to the silkscreen, then printed them using dye thickened with print paste.  Simple Screenprinting by Annie Stromquist, a Lark Book, is an excellent, user-friendly reference. There were three different shapes which I printed first in a darker green, then mixed with more print paste to give what I hoped would be an echoing color.  On top of that I drew the rust squiggle with dye mixed with print paste in a fine wire-tipped squeeze bottle, which, unfortunately, kept snagging on the knit.  So I went over it with the same dye mixture in a tjanting (used for applying wax for batik)  which worked a bit better but wasn't stellar on close inspection.

I let each step dry for a day before proceeding to the next step.  Finally I was ready for the violet.  My biggest question was if the green shapes – dye mixed with print paste – would resist the violet dye. I brushed on a fairly dark shade of violet mixed with print paste and let it cure for a day.

Then, with bated breath, I washed it all out.  And washed and washed and washed, every bucket full of blue dye.  Oh no!  So instead of the leafy green and blue violet I had envisaged, I had a yellow green clashing unpleasantly with a mauve background.  The rust centers of the flowers disappeared, and somehow the rust squiggle, which is barely visable, turned about the same green as the shapes.

So here is what I've learned.  No 1 is that the particular blue dye I used, which I have had for much longer than recommended, must have lost some of its potency, although I did use it on the previous fish-stenciled top with no problems.  Secondly, the dye mixed with print paste did work as a resist, however the second printing of the shapes which was supposed to be much lighter was almost the same color as the first.  As to the color change and near disappearance of the squiggle and the flower centers, I have no idea.  I'm trying the whole thing again.  I know it's supposed to be about enjoying the process as much as the product, but I can't help but be a bit disappointed when the product falls short of what I envisaged. However, this particular product will not be abandoned and perhaps the process of salvaging it will prove more interesting than my original idea.  So stay tuned!

Photographer...and poet

Speaking of talented people, I should have long ago introduced John Saxon, long-time friend and photographer extraordinaire.  Back in the day when we first met, John was focusing on dress shirts and designer shoes, giving those commercial shots the same meticulous attention that he now devotes to his own creative pieces.  Here, three of his virtuoso still lifes.



And a collection of randomly chosen shots that show both his discerning eye and his superior skill.

You can see more of his varied work on Flickr.

And the poet part?  In one of my February blog posts, after rhapsodising about Photoshop, I asked if anyone had ever penned an ode to it.  John took up the challenge with this clever little verse.

I think that I shall never crop
with any app but Photoshop.
In shining layers thirteen deep
deciding what or not to keep,
with filter bold and brush in hand
I make my photo seem as planned;
though only God can make a tree,
in Photoshop it's up to me.

Illustration Friday - Burst

My mind was bursting with ideas for this one. I finally settled on trying to illustrate something bursting from a book, a vividly written one, certainly.  The book itself with its burst page proved relatively simple.  I photographed a book, then stabbed a sheet of paper to create the burst effect and photographed that and overlaid it digitally on the book page, all with a bit of masking and blend modes.  I found the photos of the lorakeet and the leopard as well as the ferns on Stock.XCHNG .  The background came from Lost and Taken. There's also one of my photos of a crepe myrtle in bloom on top of that, at a very low opacity, just to add a bit more texture and color. It was interesting and I got it done with only minutes to spare.  Enough said.