A TECHNIQUE DRIVEN Blog dedicated to mastery of surface design techniques. First we dye, overdye, paint, stitch, resist, tie, fold, silk screen, stamp, thermofax, batik, bejewel, stretch, shrink, sprinkle, Smooch, fuse, slice, dice, AND then we set it on fire using a variety of heat tools.

Friday, March 20, 2015

Now we are having fun!

Searching for cool art on the internet I found the work of Lena Nyadbi and Betty Mbijana.

First Artist Inspiration

"Lena Nyadbi is a contemporary Indigenous Australian artist from the Warmun Community in the Kimberley region of Western Australia." More information about her can be found here.  Isn't she fabulous?  Her is the picture I used as one inspiration.


I started out with a pink and blue screen print that I hated. Then I squirted lines on it.  I like it better but the line quality is all wrong. Don't they look like your sex education class drawings of sperm?  This piece definitely needed painted lines rather than squirted bottle lines.






Second Artist Inspiration

"Betty is a hard working artist, whose works are very popular and have wide appeal. 
The paintings are aerial views of women's ceremonies and depict the waterholes (often in sacred places) where they take place." She does not have a website but here are more images of her work.  This is the one I used for inspiration.
  So starting with a yard long piece of cotton that I had already done some surface design on I started drawing trying to emphasis the underlying designs.  Of course I was using my handy dandy hair-dye squirt bottle.  She used a brush to create hers.  I am still trying to master my squirt bottle so ...


Because the cotton was very tightly woven the dye did tend to bubble more than it would have on muslin.  You can really see the bubbling on most of the pictures.  Since I didn't care whether the lines were perfect or not (think of it as an element design) just kept going.














See the copy of the inspiration art in the above picture?

Brought to you by Judith

14 comments:

  1. I love the final piece ..BEAUTIFUL!!!

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  2. This is just such an inspiring month. Thanks

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  3. I like your fat lines, they have character. If you want to control them, get gutta bottles and different size metal tips. Squeeze the bottle just until a drip comes out onto a scrap. Then without releasing the pressure on the bottle start your line. No sperm!
    I learned that in a class of silk painting.

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  4. I really.... REALLY love this! You are definitely coming up with some very attractive and fun pieces with your squeeze bottle lines! Great way to deal with less than satisfactory printing or painting efforts... goodness knows, we all end up with those! I now think of them as backgrounds like when you use up paint on canvas to start a new painting and want color in the background.

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  5. Wow! This is just fantastic. I'm itching to grab some of my "failed" snow dyes and get going.

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  6. Love this! And especially love this last piece.

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  7. This adds so much potential to every bit of fabric I possess! This is wonderful!

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  8. your "background" - the pink and blue screen - is what makes this so effective. it's so beautiful under these lines and circles

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  9. Really nice Judith. I'm loving this piece.

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  10. They DO look like little Sperms! LOL

    I guess I have to dig up my failures. I do have a few....

    Question: Do you just let the "bubbled" dye sit on the fabric or do you blot it off?

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  11. Very cool! I like this! I was playing with squirt bottles yesterday and tonight but with discharge paste and paint and those metal tips really do make it more controllable.

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  12. Love where this process is taking you.

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