WEEK 6 - NATURAL DYES

After discussing my work in my university presentations, it was recommended to me to explore different natural fabrics for sampling such as linens, silk and wool blends. I started another concertina sketchbook filled with more landscape paintings for more imagery to go off when doing prints. I purchased some fabric and discussed with my print technician on ways to translate the paintings onto fabric. An exciting idea was to directly paint onto the fabric itself using natural dye powders mixed with water to create a watercolour effect. I mixed lots of different colours that related of my palette and began doing small swatches onto the different fabrics for testers.

I started to then paint onto the different fabrics the landscapes done on in my concertina, taking pictures of the process and analysing the results within my sketchbook. This has allowed me to acknowledge that sampling doesn’t always go to plan, and what to change when doing it again. From this I would like to do more paintings done in with other medias such as inks, acrylic and pens as I have been consistently using the same medium, which does not allow for much development. With this I hope to begin sampling with screen printing and gocco, to create more dimensional prints.