Saturday, February 11, 2012

Expressions in Silk vs Linen 麻と絹の表現

It's now Spring holidays at Kyoto Seika University but I have been going into school to use the space and facilities to do some different experimental works. One of these has been some scroll format works. Here is the stencil I cut. It's of a male Red-rumped parrot. They are really cute little birds, shy and stick to the ground. They are often hanging around the edges of water, too.
stencil of Red-rumped parrot. You can see lots of 'bridges' holding the parts of the design together which are later erased with the resist paste.
I ended up printing 3 versions of this stencil. The first one on silk came out ok but I was unhappy with the dyeing so I reprinted it again, once on old obi silk and once on some beige natural linen. The difference in the outcomes is pretty significant! take a look for yourself.

Psephotus haematonotus (silk) 2012.  on the silk the colours are bright and crisp.
Psephotus haematonotus (linen) 2012. This time on a crispy natural linen the colours are more subtle.
close up of the Linen
Of course the dyes used on linen and those on silk are different, so that also comes into it but it was really exciting to see such different results from the one design. I like them both, for what they are. I'm interested to hear what my professors might say when I show them these two side by side after the holidays.

Lorikeets finally take flight

It's been finished for a while now but I am finally putting up some photos of my Rainbow Lorikeet panel. Its the largest piece I've made so far and the fact that I could barely fit it on the floor of my apartment to photograph it attests to that! (though it is a small apartment!)
Trichoglossus Haematodus Molucannus & Banksia Integrifolia. 2011. Approx 65cm by 190cm. line-drawn resist on silk.
 I've recently been naming pieces with the proper scientific names of the species. This is partly because they sound pretty (there are some beautiful ones once you start looking) but also because I want to be truthful in my depictions of Australian flora and fauna.
detail of flying lorikeet. The under-wing is so colourful in these birds.
detail of banksia seed-pod and flower.
the scientific names as written in resist at the bottom of the work. My Japanese professor is well versed in English so couldn't understand why she didn't know what this meant until I explained it.
I'm pretty happy with how this piece turned out. It's the first time I had done a piece solely using the hand-drawn resist paste technique (similar to yuzen dyeing). I wish I could have made the final purple background more variegated instead of one flat colour but I'm still not very good at gradient dyeing techniques (bokashi, in Japanese). Something to work on for next time!