Oxford Summer School, Batik on Tissue with Jenny O’Leary. Fascinating workshop with really inspiring ideas to be taken further. Jenny is a wonderful teacher, encouraging us throughout to experiment and see where it takes us.
These are some of my better experiments:
Black tissue paper glued on to cartridge paper, trapping pieces of string and thread between the layers. Wax applied to certain areas, then the whole piece spray bleached. Ink added in varying colours, more bleach brushed on, more yellow ink added, then pieces of scrim glued on with more yellow ink. The piece was then ironed over newspaper to remove the wax.
Background was brown tissue paper, which was spray bleached and then overlaid with strips of purple, red and fuchsia tissue. I brushed the tulip shapes and stems with wax, drew into them, then spray bleached the whole piece. I then added some sepia ink, ironed the piece, used a black pen to outline some of the shapes and added some yellow ink to the background.
The above piece started off vertically. A crumpled sheet of brown tissue was glued to paper to give some texture. Leaf shapes were collaged down the left hand side using yellow tissue and more yellow strips glued down on the right hand side. I used a brush to wax parts of the leaves and tree lines, then bleached, added the pinkish ink, then ironed. Finally I decided it looked better flipped horizontally to look like windswept trees.
Here I started with black tissue, sprayed with bleach. The large leaf was trapped under further layers of tissue, bleached again, then honesty seed heads (the layers separated) trapped under pale blue tissue. additional moon, leaf shapes, teasels waxed, bleached. Butterfly block wax printed. Ink, wax crayon, bronze ink applied almost dry applied.
This began with the newspaper image, trapped under orange tissue, with the left hand side covered with brown tissue. Bleach was first applied to the image area with a brush, then wax applied and the whole piece carefully spray bleached, masking off the central left area to give a border all around. I then bleach stamped the 0 shapes. In the image as it now appeared it looked as though there was a bird in the man’s hands, so I added some white acrylic paint to this and made stencils from my drawings of doves from the web, painting these with more acrylic. Finally the piece was ironed and I added the writing with a gel pen. I am particularly pleased with this piece.
Strips of black and coloured tissue glued on to paper. The arches were waxed and the piece spray bleached. More random lines of wax added and then more bleach until most of the colour had gone. Building outlined using Quink ink, as were the window shapes. Some scraps of bleached black tissue were added. I then removed the wax by ironing. I love this effect and will certainly do more “architectural” pieces.
This piece was done on a stretched canvas. crinkled brown tissue paper (to give texture) was glued on first and bleached until only a tint remained. I then used inks to create the landscape and the trees, using the crinkles as guidelines. I waxed the trees and used a mask to cover the bottom half before bleaching again. A little more ink was applied and the piece ironed. Finally I added a layer of acrylic wax. This format again works well I think.