Silk Painting

My Butterfly Silk Painting

This is a silk painting I did after going to my neice Maiya's birthday party.

She was given a present with this beautiful wrapping paper on it.

I got my sister to save the paper, I took it home, traced it onto some tracing paper, which I then covered in clear contact ( to save the pattern) then design onto the silk.

The colours have come up really well and nice and bright.

I used the rock salt technique which I had never used before and its one of my favourites now.

The orgininal wrapping paper,I think its 50c a sheet from Hot Dollar.

I traced the pattern onto some tracing paper then covered it with clear contact to protect it.I have used paper pattens before and wrecked the pattern .

A close up of the butterflies with just the outlines, no detail.I thought I would make them look like little people.

A close up of the butterflies with more detail in the wings. For the outlines I used Black Gutta for the bodies and Gold Gutta for the wings.
Gutta is a resist medium.
This means wherever you put the Gutta the silk paint shouldn't bleed outside the outlines.I did use a bit of gold on the flowers but only around the middle.
The flowers I have used a clear Gutta instead,as the butterflies are the main focus of this piece.
Gutta resist is used as a technique for silk similar to wax being used for Batik.

Butterflies everywhere.

Some of the silk has been painted here and the silk paint is still wet,while wet I applies rock salt to the silk and waited for the paint to dry.

The whole silk now painted and rock salt applied.

A closeup of the effect the rock salt gives,I love this technique.

Rock salt complete,the butterflies arent painted yet.

Butterflies are now painted,I love blue and green together.

The finished canvas.

 Thanks for stopping by to have a look at my blog, I appreciate it.
I hope that this might have inspired you to try something new.
You never know where it might take you.