Dominie Nash

This will surely be a challenge. The color is lovely but a little darker than I’m used to as a starting point, and I’m not sure how to deal with the white shibori circles down the center.

 Also, I rarely work with silk. 

Tried leaf rubbings with Jacquard Discharge Paste—got no impressions—just diffuse areas of discharge. Maybe silk is too soft to make an impression  with the slippery paste. Or maybe the fact that I used some old, acrylic-coated leaves? Will try the only remaining leaves in the garden—oak leaf and hydrangea-- and try using textile paint.

The pigment (blue Jacquard) worked well with both old and new leaves.  Painted over the circles with watered down blue Peintex with a little black mixed in. They are much less obvious.  Used the Peintex in a few other areas also. I’ll print over the painted areas in the next stage as well.

Screen printed leaves in 2 sizes with illumination paste (1 part Jacquard Discharge Paste to 1 part Jacquard paint). Used thermofax screens and a red-orange paint. Really liked the way the leaves stood out even on the blue background, thanks to the discharging. (Used the leftover paint on some commercial black fabric and that worked well too—this will go into my repertoire for sure—was happy to learn that it is ok health and safety-wise)

The areas painted with Peintex really stick out—my attempts at a loose watercolor effect just look like accidental blobs. What to do???

 

Turned Peintex blobs into squares and rectangles—they look a little dark but much better design-wise; relating to geometric areas resulting from leaf printing with blue Jacquard. I plan to cover some accidental white lines (from original discharging) with metallic paint or maybe Shiva Paintsticks to resemble branches. Can extend lines to go over the blue shapes to inegrate/ground them...

 Decided on the paintsticks, gold covered with copper, following white lines and adding more. I think this works with the overall design as well as softening  the blue shapes. Will heat set and wash in a few days, keeping fingers crossed!

 

Heat-set and washed successfully. Photographed and ready to send off.

Conclusion:  In retrospect, I learned a lot, some of which I’m sure I will use in future work. It seems as if most of what I did was a result of trying to solve a problem encountered in the previous step, but I’ve concluded that problem-solving is in the nature of art and is what keeps us going to the next thing. 

 Contact Dominie Nash at dominienash.com