Monday 27 January 2014

Girls carrying water

After I built the little girls to add to the background, I tried them out on the piece I thought would give the idea of a desert-like wasteland.



I made this piece of fabric some time ago when I tried a technique called flour resist. You mix up flour and water to pancake batter consistency and spread it on the fabric. Leave to dry. Then crumple it a bit and paint it with thickened dye or thinned down paint. Leave to set, then wash away the resist (not as easy as it sounds)and the pattern remains, looking a bit like wax crackle pattern. You can make marks in the flour mixture before it dries, which is how I got the stronger marks...the mixture is thinner there, and so lets some of the paint through.

Up to now, I haven't found a use for it, but it seemed just right for this without trying to go into detail of trying to represent the actual Afghan landscape.

3 comments:

Living to work - working to live said...

This technique has always sounded fascinating, if not tad messy, and I love the two little water carriers.

Sandy said...

Yes, I only did it once! You need a hot summer and a table you can leave out while it dries. (Or run fans pointing at it)
Also, it isn’t really pancake consistency as in Pancake day. But more like American pancakes, or Scotch pancakes. Which would probably help the drying!
However, apart from electricity to dry it, it is inexpensive. I would probably do it again, but you have to work up motivation!
Scrape off excess dried mixture before you wash it. and it could do with a soak in a bucket to get even more off before putting it in the wash.

Linda M said...

The perfect background, also one of my favorite messy techniques.