When I am working on a project I desperately want to be able to write about it one day and show you the next without a pause, but art labor intensive, and it takes time. Factor in making meals and taking kids to lessons and parks and libraries... well, here's what is left!
I have been working on a silk painting for a while now. My idea was that the girls love to paint too, and maybe they wouldn't interrupt if we were all painting together. Hahaha! Sheez, I crack myself up.
The original sketch itself was in progress for the months of February and March through mid April:
I drew succulents afternoons, evenings, and whenever I could steal a moment while binge watching Beauty and the Geek Australia on Youtube. As I am a beauty married to a geek I consider this to be pure research, not reality tv. What I mostly learned is that self tanner has magical transformative powers. Never mind that, what is important is that I finally ended up with a 36" square pattern of succulents. It is a repeat, meaning that if you lay the pattern side by side in any direction it will fit together like a puzzle.
As I said, the pattern is one yard square, but my fabric is 45" square. I traced the pattern onto my fabric lightly in pencil making use of the repetitive properties. You can kind of see the faint pencil lines in the picture above. The fabric was then painted over with wax, then the wax ironed off. This is what the paper looks like with the wax ironed onto it. I always think it is rather beautiful.
I had to do the wax/iron step twice as I ironed too thoroughly the first time and not thoroughly enough the second. Applying wax is fun. Ironing the waxed fabric is pretty much my least favorite job, pretty paper notwithstanding.
Then I paint. And paint. And paint. I am trying to watch as many of the American Film Institute top 100 movies list as I can stream while I paint. That, and looking introspective. You can't spend enough time trying to look introspective.
Such is my progress to date!
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