Painting 3 layers of colour on silk
Sunday, September 10, 2006
Yesterday I added 3 new photos to my online silk painting Gallery [click here to view them], to show how I painted a silk chiffon scarf in 3 colours.
If you click this photo to zoom in, you will see the 'silk claws' I used to attach the silk to the frame. [read more ...]This particular frame is a perfect fit for the silk scarf I used, you can see the claws on the right side of the frame [and at the bottom of the photo] are attached to the wood with a coloured thumbtack. [I find these are the easiest to remove when I'm finished.]
On the left of the photo, the silk claws have narrow ribbon tied to them, which is then pulled to make the silk tight enough to paint on, and then the ribbon is attached to the wood with the thumbtacks.
Here is a close-up of the claws, closer to their real size. These are the best little invention around for silk and textile artists. When they appeared on the market I fell in love with them, they made my life sooooo much easier! When I first started painting on silk all those many moons ago [I wrote a bit about it here and here], my 'teacher' [boyfriend living in Paris] had made his own frames, and had hammered nails in all along the two sides of each of his premade frames. The silk was cut to size and then stretched over the pointy ends of the nails, to hold them in place.
This was his version of what I came to know as the 'sharp teeth' - we had to be careful when putting the silk on the frames. In French, there is a word for these teeth - 'picot', and you can buy them in long strips ready to nail or screw to the wooden lengths - much sharper than nails, and shorter, they don't rust, but very very sharp. When I can find a photo, I'll post it here.
ciao for now,
Teena!
Where to buy products: You can find the silk claws and silk dyes at Dick Blick - simply click the logo in the right margin, and search for silk or claws.
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