Fantasy Fish- Silk Painting

Here's my first scarf that is worth sharing. I encourage you to click on the pictures to get a larger view. This is actually scarf #3, but the others I'm not so proud of. These fish have been swimming around in my head for quite some time, my own design. Scary what is up there, I tell ya.

Actually came up with the fishies a few years ago and put them into DesignaKnit and knit a funky drought stopper thing with them out of outrageous colors. It's in use to this day coming in handy during our below zero seige, stuffed with odds and ends of ugly yarn and ugly swatches. The draft excluder is about 8" high and the width of the door. Yarn is a wonderful insulator for this drafty (droughty?) door that goes out to the attached garage.

Anyway, I digress. As I'm learning silk painting, I thought it would be a good idea to try a different technique on each fish, which I sort of accomplished. There is soooooo much to learn. A lot of silk painting seems to be comprised of happy and unhappy surprises. I think I lucked out in a way with the seaweed. It's very forgiving, as are the underwater reflections that lend themselves well to shadings of color. This time I was a little more successful blending my own colors---shades of green, blue and purple.

The first scarves I did had some mud shades resulting from over-zealous mixing of colors. For this one, I used habotai silk, 8mm with pre hemmed edges, 8" wide x 56" long. The resist is water soluble as are the Dye-na-flow paint dyes. I'm still getting the hang of that water soluble resist. It's tricky. There are some fat lines and some thinner lines. I prefer to file them under artistic license....

To stretch my silk, I used a highly sophisticated cardboard box reinforced with masking tape. I used push pins to stretch the scarf over the box's opening. If I keep up with the silk painting, I'll need to get a better frame for stretching the silk. I guess I wanted to get into this the cheapest way possible to see if I liked it or not. I know that's not the best approach, but...

I NEED to take an art class or two. Flying by the seat of one's pants seems to waste some time, although painful lessons sink in pretty good.

My knitting machines miss me. But right now, I am totally infatuated with this medium. I feel Paul watching over my shoulder and cheering me on.