Contents
An Invitation to Design 1
Part 1 surface design fundamentals
Chapter 1 Setting Up Your Work Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Chapter 2 Exploring Your Media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Chapter 3 Selecting Your Fabric . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Chapter 4 Painting the Base . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Chapter 5 A dding Texture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Part 2 Surface Design Techniques
Chapter 6 S tamping and Relief Printing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Chapter 7 Stenciling Techniques 80
Chapter 8 Nature Printing 92
Chapter 9 Monotype, Collagraph, and Gelatin Prints 102
Chapter 10 Silk-Screen Printing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
Chapter 11 Working with Resists 164
Chapter 12 Image Transfer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
Chapter 13 Marbling Methods 216
Chapter 14 Fold and Color 230
Chapter 15 Drawing on Fabric 242
Chapter 16 All That Glitters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
Chapter 17 Sewing: As Accent, Embellishment, and Texture . . . . . 274
Part 3 a designer’s notebook
Inspiration and Record keeping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288
Basic Color Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292
Composition 101 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306
Reading List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .308
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .309
An Invitation to Design
Designing your own fabric opens up a whole world of possibilities, and in this book you’ll find a wide range of techniques that you can use for just this purpose. Keep in mind that this book was written for you and your creative process. It is not about me, my artistic sensibility, or even the techniques I use and love, although I included most of them in these pages. I’ve also presented the work of a variety of fiber artists whose aesthetics encompass a wide range of imagery as well as personal taste and style, so that you can see the endless possibilities these techniques offer you.
Why Choose Paint Instead of Dyes?
I chose to write about using paint on textiles rather than dyes simply because paints are easy to work with. There are no complicated recipes to follow and no toxic chemicals or fumes to worry about. Paints are quick and easy to set up. Cleanup is also a breeze, because it can be done simply with just soap and water. If your studio is the family kitchen table, and your time frame is the length of your youngest child’s afternoon nap or the couple of hours you have between dinner and bedtime, then paint is the way to go.
It’s my belief that many of the techniques accomplished with dyes on fabric can also be executed with paint. The only real restriction is size, although I successfully stretch and paint 3 yards of fabric at a time on a regular basis. Even more impressive, textile painter Mickey Lawler stretches vast quantities of fabric in her backyard to paint yards of incredible skyscapes. (For an example of her work, see page 46.)
Techniques and Creativity
Although the step-by-step instructions in this book are written with beginners in mind, experienced surface design artists will value the information as a reference or reminder of techniques they may have forgotten. You can take all of these techniques much farther than the specific instructions here: use my guidance as a kickoff to your own investigation. Think of each technique as a big experiment where you have to uncover the meaning and scope of its capability. The reality is that you could work with any one of the techniques for months on end before even beginning to tap into its full potential.
For those of you who are just starting out as a creator of art, think of the work you do from these exercises as samples of the techniques you are learning; chances are they aren’t going to be masterpieces at first. For more experienced users, remember that masterpieces come only after many ho-hum pieces.
More simply great or wonderful or even just nice pieces are out there than there will ever be masterpieces. And even a masterpiece is never perfect. Rather, each masterpiece is only a stepping stone (albeit a rather large stepping stone) to the next piece or, more than likely, to the next direction your work takes you. And each time you turn in a new direction, you are a beginner again.
Masterpieces aside, even good work needs your permission to emerge. You, as the artist, grant that permission by allowing yourself to experiment without judgment. As you work, you need the spontaneity and wonder of a child before you can achieve provocative artwork. You need to learn to let go of the visual idea in your head as to what “good” art really looks like.
If you are the sort of person who tackles each new project with a steadfast idea in your head, remember that what happens on the piece of cloth in front of you has a mind and a direction of its own. What it becomes is often far more exciting, or at least just as exciting, as the original idea.
One of the most important tools we need as an artist is one we all possess: our eyes. Using our eyes to truly observe the world around us is a critical step in learning to be an artist. The next time you sit down to draw something from life, take note of how much time you spend looking at the object in contrast to how much time you spend looking at your drawing. Often people spend more time looking at the drawing and then are frustrated because the drawing doesn’t accurately represent the object they’re trying to draw. How can it? The artist doesn’t really know what it looks like, because he or she has been drawing based on a preconceived notion of what the object looks like, rather than what it actually looks like.