Natural Dye For My Hypothetical Line

So, in my developmental drawing class, our final project is to design a line and stuff without actually making it. we need fabric swatches, and since i plan on doing natural dye, I've been dying pieces of silk. i accidentally made all the same colours just in two different pallets... oops!


i am going to number them going from left to right, top row first.
1. 2. 3. 4
5. 6. 7. 8

1. Purple Logwood with Vinegar and Alum
2. Curry with Alum
3. Madder and Curry with Alum
4. Cochineal and Alum
5. Onion Skins 
6. Berry Green Tea and Curry with Alum
7. Madder and Alum
8. Purple Logwood and Alum

If you want to make any of these, you can buy alum in the grocery store in the spices section. you simply place the dye stuff in a pot with alum, and bring to a simmer. put the fabric in the pot with it (make sure you wash it! wool and silk dye better than cotton) and allow it to simmer until fabric reaches desired darkness. most of these were in a bath for about an hour. They are also safe for cooking pots!

which set of colours do you like the best? top or bottom? or a mixture of the two?

Today i bought Jeggings (jeans/leggings hybrid). i didn't think they were for me until i found a pair of boot cut ones, and they are so comfortable! my body shape doesn't flatter skinny jeans (think icecream cone), so i never thought they would be for me. button fly, why did i never notice how uncomfortable you were until now?

Completed Repeat

So, here is my completed repeat! Mine was fairly dull in comparison to a lot of other ones people did in my class. I hand dyed the fabric, just to let you know :) the colour is closer to the first picture, but the flash did weird things up close, so it looks more pink in the second.


Fashion Drawings at Last!

I took some initiative and FINALLLLLYYYY took a bunch of fashion drawing pictures. none of them are really fantastic in any way to be honest.... i am better at rendering than fashion drawing i've decided.



this is the difference between a 7-8 head figure (normal human) and the inhuman 9 headed fashion figure (its all in the legs)

some studies of poses 
silouettes from live model
stiff looking pencil drawings
silouette studies (the bottom one are blind contours cut out of sunglasses)

from here down are when i had to do 250 sketches in 2 weeks.... quantity over quality. five series of 50 themed drawings. the hilights

lights hitting wet streets

swimwear

The Garden Party

Flowers (literal)

A Series of Unfortunate Events

i've done some more since this but this is all i photographed!

this summer i am going to make myself photograph in detail a lot of my projects on a nice background and stuff!

My First Repeating Print!

so, i know my blog is basically just screenprinting, but draping is just boring unbleached cotton things, and developmental drawing I've been much to lazy to photograph the hundreds of drawings. i promise i will document some in the near future. This is my first repeating pattern. Its of a lamp! i know, its kind of a boring subject matter, but... its what i ended up doing.

I had to draw out my design on tracing paper. i used opaque ink to ink it in, the design is 10 inches by 20 inches. it involved a lot of grid paper and rulers and messing up. i originally had this whole thing twice, so it was a big square with four sets of the lamps.... 16 lamps total but it wouldn't fit on my screen. oops! from here, i emulsified my screen, which involves coating with photo emulsion, and then exposing the screen to light. The black lamps block the light and they wash out in a sink when you're done, creating a stencil.

the same lamps, close up, printed. in some places the ink wasn't thick enough so light passed through and made white spots. i don't know if i really mind it though, you can tell they were hand painted that way. i sort of like the natural feel though, if i wanted them all to be perfect i would have printed it off on a computer. 

this is my meter test print. from here, i have to pick a fabric and ink colour to print them in, and i am not sure, i like the idea of yellow background and red lamps, but that's sort of... ketchup and mustard/McDonalds. 

what colours should i use? i can't decide.