Silk Vineyard

Silk Vineyard

Image Size 13" x 19"

Silk dyes on silk

This is the other silk painting that I took to demonstrate on at the Tustin Art League.  I painted the sky to show them how to work without resist and then blended colors within a leaf and a couple of other places but did most of the painting this past week.  I like the realistic feeling of the sky juxtaposed with the graphic quality of the rest of the painting.  I used black resist on this one to give it the look of a stained glass window.

I haven't steamed this yet and it's not stretched so the border is a little uneven but it will look better when it's steamed and stretched.

Silk Hibiscus

Silk Hibiscus

Image Size 8" x 10"

Silk dyes on silk

I'm going to be the demonstrator for the Tustin Art League on Wednesday and I will be showing how to paint on silk.  I will be showing the serti techique that uses a resist to control where the dyes go as well as the watercolor technique, which uses no resist and creates blurry colors. I also want show an example of how the dyes are controlled when using an all-over resist.  I have an all-over resist that is made by Jacquard called No Flow which I've used in small areas of other silk paintings that I've done but I've never coated the entire piece of silk and tried painting on it.

That is what I did with this painting.  The No Flow keeps the dyes from spreading and they act more like regular paints would on paper or canvas.  It was fun trying this technique but I missed being able to get the dyes to flow together and give that beautiful blended effect that can be achieved using the watercolor technique.

I also tried this same technique using spray starch as the resist.  It didn't seem to resist quite as well as the No Flow - the edges fuzzed a little bit - but it was almost as good.  I tried painting using the starch surface first and had okay results but I felt that there was something missing so I added some broken lines of black resist to create a look of pen and ink along with the color.  Here is that one:

I think I need to add some indications of other flowers and leaves loosely in the background.  I'm not crazy about this composition but I drew it in about 5 minutes so that's why it is as it is.  I learned that salt doesn't have much of an effect on this treated surface which makes sense because the salt can't draw the moisture out of the dyes like it can on an untreated piece of silk.

Overall, these two paintings were a fun experiment and I've added another technique that I can talk about during my demo.  Now, I just need to figure out what I'm going to paint that night.

If you are in the Orange County area and are interested in learning the basics of silk painting, you are welcome to come to the meeting.  It will be held in the board room of the Tustin Unified School District building at 300 south C street, Tustin.  The meeting starts at 7:00.

The Vintage Lady - Silk Painting

This is going to be one of my submissions for the annual Tustin Art League's "Scenes of Tustin" juried show.  If  it gets juried into the show it will hang in Chemers Gallery in Tustin for a couple of weeks.

This is a quaint building that I've always loved in Old Town Tustin.  Unfortunately, it was damaged by a fire last December.  From the outside it looks like it might be able to be saved but I don't know if it is structurally sound.  Anyway, I had taken pictures of this building a few years ago intending to paint it and never got around to it.  I thought this year would be a good time to immortalize the image since it is no longer the Vintage Lady.  I hope someone is able to save this building and bring it back to its original charm.  I'll be very sad if it has to be torn down.

I had a lot of fun creating this silk painting.  I used techniques that I've never used before.  I wanted the foliage to have a softer look so I painted the lightest green color then after it dried I covered some of it with wax to save the light green.  Then I painted progressively darker greens and saved them with the wax.  By doing it this way, I was able to not have the foliage surrounded by the white resist lines.  I like the look of the resist lines but by having some areas without them I think the painting has a more complex look.

I also used a product called "No Flow" which keeps the dyes from spreading. This made it possible to paint the sign and filigree at the top of the facade.  This painting took a long time to finish but I'm very happy with the result.

The Vintage Lady
Image Size 22" x 20.5"
Silk Dyes on Silk

Fairbanks, Alaska - Silk Painting

I found this log cabin while I was traveling virtually in Fairbanks, Alaska.  I used a bit of artistic license with the yard.  I got rid of some of the stuff they had sitting around the yard and then re-landscaped.  I know it's very green but that's one of my favorite colors and there really is a lot of green up there.  I haven't done a silk painting for awhile so I decided to do a graphic painting of this scene.If you want to see the street map view I used, you can see it on Google street maps here.

Fairbanks, Alaska
Image Size 8" x 21"
Silk dyes on silk

Peter's Canyon - Silk Painting

I'm going to enter this silk painting in a local juried show in a couple of weeks.  If it gets selected, it will hang in Chemers Gallery in Tustin for two weeks.  If you are an artist living around Orange County, CA, you still have time to enter the competition.  Go to tustinart.blogspot.com to get the information and entry form.  The painting has to be a scene from Tustin, North Tustin or Peter's Canyon to be eligible.  The entry form and fees are due April 16th and the artwork is to be delivered between April 20th to 23rd for judging.  How it is framed is very important.  It needs to be a plain black or dark stained color frame.  If you have any doubts, take the frame into the gallery for an okay.

I have one more painting I want to do for this show so hopefully it will be done by next week.  It will probably be an oil painting but might be another silk painting.  I like to enter silks into this show because the judging is separated between amateur and professional rather than by medium.  Nobody ever knows into which category the silk paintings belong.  They usually get put into general (if there is that category) or mixed media ( which it's not).  To me, it seems like they belong in the watercolor/water media category because the dyes are water soluble but I've never had anyone agree with me on that.  What do you think?

Peter's Canyon

Image Size 21.5" x 31"

Silk dyes on silk

Pink Plumeria - Silk Painting

This is my 100th blog post! That doesn't really mean anything except that 100 of anything seems like is should be some kind of milestone. It doesn't seem like I've posted that many paintings. I look forward to Mondays and each new post. Some weeks it's been a little stressful to get a painting finished in time but knowing that Monday is looming has kept me on task and motivated.

Had I known in advance about this momentous occasion I would have tried to paint something more unusual and thought provoking but this is what you get. I'm back in my tropical mode and this is a silk painting. I love plumeria and even though the flowers that are this color don't have as strong a scent as the white ones do, the intensity of their color screams 'tropical' to me. And besides, does the scent really matter in a painting?

Pink Plumeria

Image Size 17" x 17"

Silk Dyes on Silk
Unframed
$275.00

Cyber Cafe - Silk Painting

I've found so many places I want to paint while virtually visiting Corsica, so I've taken the challenge again. I decided to make this one more fanciful so I chose Silk dyes on silk as my medium. When I found this scene, I was attracted to the laundry hanging between the windows. I don't know why I find that so appealing. Laundry is not at all appealing when I see it in our house. It's funny how something becomes charming when it's in another culture. Oh well, I guess I should be happy that I have a clothes dryer and don't have to hang my laundry to dry. I've included my reference photo below so that you can see that I went crazy employing artistic license with this one. I re-built the building, added plants and changed the colors on the building and shutters. I wonder if it can still be considered a reference photo.

I have one more Corsica painting in the works that I will hopefully finish this week.

Cyber Cafe

Image size 16" x 16"

Framed
Sold

Tropical Silk - Silk Paintings

Another silk painting for this week. I have always liked tropical art and I've been digging out my photos of tropical subjects because I'm in the mood to paint some now. I may try palm trees in some other mediums. I may do this design again in silk with brighter colors. I may do so many tropical paintings that you get tired of seeing them. I hope not because I really enjoy having you all visit my blog. : )

Tropical Silk

Image Size 16" x 20"

Silk dyes on silk

Framed
$400.00

Silk Birds - Silk Painting

Finally, another silk painting. I haven't done one for several months and I've really missed working in this medium. I've always loved the colors and shapes of Bird of Paradise but have never painted them. I thought that silk would be the perfect medium for re-creating them.

Image Size 21" x 21"
Silk dyes on silk
Unframed