Paint and Piece - Day 1

I was up early to walk to the far reaches of the University to attend day one of a two day course. Margie Davidson is instructed 14 of us on different techniques to create various effects using Seta Colour Transparent Paints. 

We began by making backgrounds. We made two pieces. One we hung to dry and the other we laid flat. The hung one dripped on the floor and ended up a lighter colour than the one laid flat. 

Next we tried out some textures. We made crinkle fabric, over painted some preprinted black and white fabric, and used salt and rice to provide textures. 

After lunch some of our morning fabrics were dry, so we now could overpaint them.  we used leaves we had picked on campus as stencils and stamps. We made positive and negative leaf prints and also did some sun prints. We will have to wait till tomorrow to discover the results of the sun prints as the effect is created thru the drying of the fabric. 

One great idea to create texture is to use the rubber underlay for carpets. They provide a grid to the fabric as shown above. Or use the bottom of a garden tray to get various lines. Anywhere something touches the wet fabric will be lighter after the fabric dries. How does this work?  Think about osmosis. As the fabric dries the moisture wicks up to the area drying the quickest. As it moves it pulls the paint along with it. So, for example, in the following photo, the light areas are where the garden tray touched the fabric.