Left Over Black Dye

I had left-over black dye from last week's screening of the spirals. Can't let it waste away. Consequently, on Monday I decided just to play. This is only the second time I have worked with black dye or paint. I do not know why I never tried to before. I think that will change now. I recently bought an 250 ml bottle of black Seta color.

My first experiment was to use one of my fabric tools -  a brayer with rubber banks wrapped around it. I used it to print on a silk organza scarf. This was followed by printed with twelve erasers attached to a piece of plexi-glass with velcro on another one of these scarves. Usint the velcor was something Jane Dunnewold told us about when I took her Complex Cloth workshop about 10-11 years ago.

I was going to over dye them until my artist buddy, Chris, came over yesterday morning. She said leave them as is. When I showed another two artist friends in Tubac yesterday afternoon, they concurred with Chris. One even order a stamped version and requested that I use maroon instead of black. What do I know?

I next played with several small pieces of cotton that I had dyed previously. The next two I thought I had already steamed and washed out. However, after playing with the black dye, I steamed them and discovered new brighter colors popping out.

Like I said, I was just trying different tools and not worrying about creating a finished piece. I figured I could just cut them up for some of my fabric collages. I even tried using a sponge brush with one of my silk screens; which I did not like - too much dye through the screen. Again Chris surprised me, she said that these two should be framed or mounted and sold as is. I guess I need to filter my left brain. What do agree with Chris or should I just cut them up and use them in collages?

Below is another piece I experimented with. I do not like the middle section, but I think parts of it have possibilities for collages.

I do not know whether I like the front or the back of the last piece the best. Again, I do not think I had steamed and wash it before applying the black dye. That is why the front and back are different.

Front

Back

Which one do you like?

Spirals

I love spirals. For some reason they speak to me probably because they are timeless. I started with them to build up my inventory of stamps, stencils, and silk screens to add images to art cloth. About a year ago, I spent about an hour just drawing shapes with charcoal. I could not figure out what to do with the spirals because of their odd shapes. Recently, I told myself odd shapes are interesting - duh!!!

First I sprayed the charcoal drawings with hair spray to seal them.Then I traced the basic shapes of several of the spirals and glued the tracings to black paper. The spirals were cut out using a utility knife. These were then scanned into the computer, printed, and then silk screens were produced using a thermofax machine. 

While cutting out the black paper, it occurred to me that the original charcoal drawings would make exciting  silk screens. They were scanned into the computer and the stamp filter from Photoshop Elements was applied to them to make the marks that comprised the spirals more distinct. I reduced the size of these spirals, to add  variety in size in the complementary motifs.

I finished with two screens that contain several different spirals all reduced in sized to fill up a large screen.