the blank canvas b00gie

Yeah, that's a big empty cloth canvas peering over my shoulder. Right now it's not wearing a welcoming smile -it's leering. I took the black one down. It never stopped laughing at me loudly.


I spent a lot of time sketching digitally last night without anything jumping up and waving its arms screaming "make me!" so my fleeting notion of direct dye painting has been effectively quashed.

Later this morning, I'll take some raw cloth outside and paint some shapes...weather permitting. We are about to take our spring weather licks here in Georgia.

closing in on done.

its been a lot of fun.

First fruits of the season

Here they are washed and dried. Early outcomes are always guideposts for me. I can see that one of the warm color blends has a level of Fuschia in it that I will have to ferret out. The muslin that I pulled from the closet seems to have a level of resistance to dye that I find surprising while the old damask remains extremely open to the dye...less would be fine.

I'm taking the three intensely colored pieces straight to the design wall..the pale one will go back to the dye table for further clean up service.

color rescue

I thought about it some overnight and remembered how much I liked the  results from using various dry agents to carry and distribute raw dye powder.
(see Sugar Dyeing for a full explanation and some rules) .

Today it was a half pound of quinoa that I bought last year with the intention of cooking it up to see if I like it.  I wasn't in the mood for cooking or eating any weird or good for me so it's languished in the pantry since last summer.

 Since then there's been some controversy about how the booming demand from other places for quinoa has driven up the price devastated  the local culture and economies where it was a staple crop. More about that here and here.
So I went ahead and put my half pound to work in the service of my art.

These are outside in the garbage bag incubator baking in the sun. I'm wondering if the dry grains will swell with the heat and water and make patterns on the cloth.  If there's time I'll hatch them out before work today. Below is the first tablemopper of the season - always full of promise.

color fatigue?

As nice as it was outside today, I had to mix the dyestock in the kitchen - it was too breezy out for safe handling of fresh dye powder. Running water was nice too, instead of dipping and rinsing tools and containers in a big tub on the deck.

So I took my time and got the basic colors mixed but I ran out of gas and

and squeeze bottles for the variant colors. I had a few pieces of cloth ready for wiping up but did a few quick and dirty baggies instead.

The violence of everything seems shocking to me. I think my brain has been regrooved in recent months. I put the dyes in the refrigerator and will think about what comes next.