Lots Of Fabric To Paint

So here is how the fabric project starts....I will be painting many yards of each of the sample designs shown here. Here is my lovely bolt of new fabric. I use 200 thread count muslin, usually unbleached, for better application of the paint and a very soft silky feel to the finished fabric.

I like to be bold and have a lot of fun with the colour wash that underlies the detailed painting. Contrast and movement make for much more depth later. A lot of this simply disappears under later motifs, and gets blended into the overall, but its always worth it to see some lovely shape or texture peek out between the later additions to the painting. Something always shows.

It is wonderful to watch the colours blend and separate. I have learned to let this happen, and not smooth it away, from painting and firing the ceramics, and seeing the cool things that happen when colour blends and melts and shifts into its neighbour.

Time for a tea break! One of my painted mugs with fish all over it too...I couldn't resist the photo op.I was in a great hurry last night to finish this piece, and get a new piece on the table, and do the colour wash so it was ready to paint on today. Otherwise much of the morning would have been wasted waiting for this next section to dry, if I had done the wash then. I didnt take any pictures of the finished first piece on the table last night, but here you can see where I have advanced the fabric, and begun the process all over again for another 2 1/2 yrds....Over the edge of the table its too dark for proper pictures, but its a nice effect!