albedo

I had forgotten how much fun–and really how easy it is–to add colour to fabric without a whole lotta messing around. Love those natural dyes, but nothing beats textile paints and dyes like Procion for instant saturation, in colour value and penetration!

I’ve already learned the hard way that it’s easy to ruin a piece by a. using too much paint b. making the paint runny with too much GAC and c. make sure that fabrics are ironed before they get laid on the plate!  A good lesson, satisfying to know, is that even cheap acrylic paint with the addition of GAC will wash with no colour loss. Misting the plate will not keep the paint moist: it will bead on top or smear and run when the fabric is brayered over. There’s no second ghost print even with too heavy application to begin with. Using a previously printed piece can give good results or  be crap on a stick, depending on both layers of application–if either was too heavy, the fabric is practically impenetrable with a needle of any sort! (Lalage flung broken bits of machine needle at me when i used her on one.)

And no, i am not not going to go the gelatin plate way–too much nonsense for the end product, not interested (at this point) and too much mess, prep and storage logistics.

Found a spectacular piece i had painted over a year ago that was for some reason stashed away:

No monoprint on this but i have ideas to add without obscuring the paint technique on this. And more experimentation still to be done with the technique.

I’m still experimenting with the natural dyes too, and FybreSpace is on temporary hiatus for this reason.