A part of my process when I design a painting is colour matching. After I purchased all of my dyes, I made colour swatches for them and super glued them to the caps of the corresponding dye bottles. This was to ensure that I had an accurate estimation of what the saturation was of the dye.
When the resist has set and I am ready to paint, I always pull out my dyes and carefully colour match as best I can. I line up all of the bottles that I have chosen, and when I am confident that the colours will look good together, I begin.
However, there is one thing that I cannot account for - BLENDING. When I was in high school, one of the exorcises we had to complete in painting class was blending our own tints, shades, and hues of colours with only three paints. You know those colour swatches on the bottom of your cereal box?. Yup, those are what we had to use in order to come up with over 140 colours (plus white for the tints). It was a FANTASTIC exorcise, and I think the one that I did which really gave me confidence and understanding of colour. Unfortunately, liquid silk dyes are not student grade acrylic paints and are unpredictable.
Some dyes are more dominant than others and that means that the more dominant dye colours will cling to the silk better than the non-dominant. This scarf is a perfect example of that. The yellows I chose for the dahlia were Bright Yellow and Yellow with a little bit of Citron Green. My ratio of Yellow was low and Bright Yellow was high so that the deep yellow would not overpower the Bright. But, when it came time to steam and wash, the darker yellow didn't hold. I lost the boldness of the yellow and the result is a washed out looking yellow Dahlia.
You can imagine how upset I was when I saw this. This scarf took me hours and hours and I went over each petal several times with different brush thicknesses to get the desired effects. My low back was killing me after bending over for so long and my feet ached like I'd been walking for hours. After all of that care, and love, it didn't turn out.
This is one of the scarves which didn't sell. I see it as a failure, which as an artist we are taught to never admit. You are always to brazenly push your art upon a viewer with no apologies!. This scarf I do regret. The design held special meaning to me as my family used to run a seasonal flower business. The business is how I got through College. I was, "The Flower Girl". Every summer from the age of 16-19, our family set up shop on the corner of Oxford and Wharncliffe Rd. N in London, ON and we would sell Gladioli and Dahlias. Dahlia's were my Dad's favorite flowers, and the Yellow one was his absolute favorite. It's blossoms could grow larger than your face. When this scarf didn't turn out how I had wanted it to, I was so upset.
This scarf taught me a valuable lesson about being extra cautious about choosing your dyes. It also opened my eyes to accepting things beyond your control, which is something I have trouble with.
In my day job there is always a "right" and "wrong" way of doing a drawing or executing an animation. It's always your fault when what you do isn't good enough because you can always erase and make it better. In this art form, you have NO control over the outcome. Sure you can recognize which dyes work which ways, but as for the final result, you will never know until the piece is ironed.
Even though I view this as a failure, I still think that it's a marvelous piece in parts. I'm happy I learned more about blending with dyes when I painted this. Now, I know to not get too emotionally attached to what I am doing and try accept that the chips will fall where they may.
