smallhobbit: (zentangle)
smallhobbit ([personal profile] smallhobbit) wrote2021-09-29 07:59 pm

Silk Painting without gutta

Yesterday's Dare to Dabble session was Silk Painting Without Gutta.  Gutta is the substance which prevents one colour of paint blending into another.  Essential, this was a painting class - and I am no painter.  Maybe, with practise, I could improve, but there a lot of techniques I need to learn first.

Anyway, we began with lots of small pots of paints, paintbrushes and two pots of salt - one with small grains, one with larger crystals.  And some prepared silk canvas stretched over a frame.



Most people simply painted on the silk.  If you don't pre-wet the silk the paint behaves like normal paint.  I was more interested in the idea of the colours spreading together, so I started off by painting water onto the canvas.  After which I painted some blue sky.



My plan was to have various autumnal spots underneath, and this is how I began, with dropping spots of colour from my paintbrush.



I added a third, which was supposed to be a bush with fruit on it.  As you can see, the yellow and orange dots on the right hand side had completely disappeared, and I spent a lot of time adding to them.



By now, I realised that it really wasn't turning out like anything discernable, so I joined up the separate bushes, to create and autumnal hedgerow.



This is the final result.  We're going to fake Jackson Pollock's signature and make a fortune from it!



It was an interesting experiment.  I don't know what those who simply painted made of working on a different material, but for me it was something I'd never have tried otherwise, and it's always fun doing something different.
rusty_armour: (ladderchat)

[personal profile] rusty_armour 2021-10-01 06:03 pm (UTC)(link)
I've never tried painting on silk. While your artwork may not have turned out the way you'd planned, it's still really beautiful. I love the colour combinations and the way they've been combined. I really like your technique of allowing the colours to spread together.