Painting on Silk

This morning I went to my second class on silk painting. Last week we learned some of the basics and then painted resist lines with water-based gutta (which is like masking in watercolor) on our stretched silk scarves, about 10" x 40" long. I was late to class, thinking it didn't start until this week, but they called me and I dashed over. I had to come up with a design really fast. I did a series of six big spirals rolling across the fabric, plus stars, moon, sun and some squiggles. This week we painted the design on the silk. I started with yellow in the center of each spiral and gradated the color through orange to red around the spirals and put a turquoise background on it. It's a little sloppy, but very colorful and was fun to do. I kept forgetting that I didn't have to paint up to the resist lines, but should let the color spread to the lines. After my painting was dry, I removed it from the stretcher bars. According to the teacher's instructions, I rolled it up with a thin cotton sheeting and made a small bundle, which was then wrapped tightly in newsprint. The instructor took our bundles home with her to steam them in a big kettle to set the colors. I'll put a digital image of my scarf on my blog when I get it back next week.