After a week at my favorite dry cleaners, the painting looks bright and shiny. The silk threads glisten. The main panel is ready for its two soulmates to be created !
Final Image for Wet World
Category: Uncategorized
I am now in the final stretch of this piece. I have added a few more colors to paint on, and then it’s time for waxing out. As you can see, I am placing sheets of newsprint over portions of the image at a time, allowing the wax to absorb into the newsprint. This takes at least 1/2 an hour of my time. Quite often I am asked:”How long does it take for you to create one of these paintings”. I actually loose track after a while, but in this case, the photo enlargement, and placing on the fabric have taken over 3 hours; the waxing of the white layer took about two hours, then the remaining layers took another 4-5 hours. This does not count the drying time between each layer of wax and dye. So for this project, I already have at least 11 hours work before touch up and finishing to go.
Using newsprint to remove the wax
Ironing out the last traces of wax
Darker blue waters are added
Now I am getting really excited about this painting. The colors are holding their own. The next few photos are showing the build-up of color, moving towards the final result
Dying # 4, adding more color
After these first two rounds of dying and painting are completed, I go on and add more color, working from light to dark, trying to bring out as many details as I can. the painting begins to take shape
Version three of the dying process
I now can get started with my dying process. This painting is very complex, due to the number of color combinations and waxings that must be done in order to accomplish getting the information in front of me to look like what I have envisioned. I start by painting on all of the white areas with hot wax. This time around, pure white is few and far between, so after I do the initial waxing I paint on the next few colors: yellow for the floating debris, and a pale rose pink for the basic flesh. tone While the painting is still wet, I decide that it is too intense, so I paint a layer of ecru dye over the pink over the wet fabric, to more carefully match the color I am looking for. This gets waxed, and I keep on going…
"Warren's World" in the early stages
- “Warren’s World” Painting with the first few dye baths started
I know that asking what you were doing while on vacation is a common question, but this time, I decided to try to show one tiny part of it in a new painting series I’m christening “The Water Series”. While snorkeling with at Sandy Cay in the Bahamas, a photograph I took of my husband snorkeling opened up a whole slew of new ideas on how to create the moment in Batik. I would like to show how over the next few writings I created a new wall hanging that is still in process. The first photo I am showing is the cool picture I took of Gill in the water snorkeling. I liked the reptilian patterning on his arm and the way the light reflected on the surface of the bright turquoise water. I took the photograph that I liked so much, and converted it into a line drawing in Photoshop. I then blew up the black and white image to the size I wanted to create the painting, and proceeded to draw it on to a large piece of beautiful white upholstery grade silk that I had acquired last year. (Oh thank heaven for yard sales). Then I began my wax and dying process.
The photo that started a new series
The base layer for the new batik
Friday, I picked up my new painting from the tailor, with the “Sleeves” and center panel sewn into place and ready for hanging. It came out great, and looks better in some ways than I imagined. The problem now is trying to hang it to photograph. The sleeves and folds makes it an awkward shape, long in a horizontal format, and not wide: 36″ tall by 72″ wide. I shot one set of images, but am going to try again. It is very different from the other pieces I have put together…
I am always happy to see “the season” (the three month period when the Naples Florida art and social world goes crazy) come and then go. I almost get nothing done in the way of artwork during that time. I was pleased with my gallery exhibition at the ArtLab. I did manage to create two pieces for the” Have A Seat III” event at the Friends of Art Naples Museum of Art event. I also was busy with displaying at the 25th Annual SW Florida Craft Guild’s Exhibit of Excellence at BIG Arts on Sanibel Island. There I won a Merit award for one of my pieces from the February show: Hava Tampa Spirit. The reception was well attended, but most of the time, I have been doing a lot of thinking. After seeing one of my pieces hanging in my February show, I decided that I was not happy with the final format of the layout, and I felt that I wasn’t doing well in expressing my feelings for the images that I was working with. After I had a critique with Barbara Hill, my art advisor, I decided to take one of the pieces from the February show apart, and try to rework it into a more cohesive image. This took a lot of weeping and gnashing of teeth, but I finally came up with a workable plan to create a Seminole style Kimono image that would hang on a banner. I worked out this image by making little paper dolls of layouts, photographing them, and seeing how they looked together. I have sent the fabric off to be re-sewn into the sleeves and shaping of what I want. We’ll see where I go from here.
Calle de La Cruz
A few years ago, an article appeared in the Fall 2007 edition of The Surface Design Journal about artist Betsy Benjamin and her use of Soy wax in creating batik images. I read the story and put it aside, thinking that I would like to try it sometime. The opportunity arouse this last fall when I received some soy wax in an order from Dharma Trading Company, my dye supplier. I wanted to experiment with this wax, as I was seeking greener alternatives to mixing my beeswax with paraffin wax. I tried using the wax in several different projects, the first was with the “Seated in Silence” painting. I liked the results and kept on going. In this situation, the soy wax was mixed with the beeswax, so that I would have a wax that was not too runny, and would harden faster. I tried it again with another painting of a downtown street in Old San Juan:”Calle de La Cruse”.The sky and other ares of solid color did not flex well, and tended to break and create more crackle than I was used to, but I liked the final results anyway.
FGCU ArtLab Reception 2.18.10
Feb. 18, 2010. I have been behind in writing, as I have been busy preparing all of my paintings for the show that debuted last Thursday at the FGCU ArtLab. This show is titled: “Dying Arts: Batiks and Silk Works by Muffy Clark Gill and Nuch Owen” has been a labor of love for over a year since interim Curator Anica Sturdivant asked me to participate . I met Thai artist Nuch Owen many years ago when she first came to the Naples area. Her skill in painting on silk using Gutta resist is unbelievable, and very intricate. I enjoy her work and respect the talent that goes into creating it. I brought 8 paintings to the show including “Seated in Silence”;” Hava Tampa Spirit”, and two of my pieces from the FGCU Steamroller project. WGCU Public Media hosted the reception as a member event, and over 60 people showed up(there were RSVP’s for 107, and it was hard to track a true total). Quite a few for a intimate gallery setting on the University campus.I really enjoyed talking to the students who were asked to do a report on the exhibition. The show also featured the debut of my new silk hanging: “Influence”. I have a web page of the show here: http://tinyurl.com/ydmhbot.
The show was part of a busy week that included a talk about how I use my Mac computer with my artwork, and two Batik demonstrations in the Southwest Florida area, along with the opening reception February 12th for the 7th Biennial National Art Exhibition at the Visual Arts Center in Punta Gorda. The “Hava Tampa” painting was one of the 138 entries accepted from over 720 submissions. By the time Sunday night came, I was worn out!
