Monday, December 5, 2011

Sharpies and alcohol revisited

Back here, I started experimenting with permanent markers and alcohol after becoming inspired by Deb Lacativa's experiments . I played a little, then got distracted by other things, and haven't really had time to get back to it since then. But as I begin learning Rayna Gillman's techniques from her new book, I began gathering and sorting fabrics from my stash, and came across the original sharpie and alcohol fabrics I had created. I got the urge to try the technique again, but didn't have a lot of colors in my sharpie collection. Today, while shopping for something else, I happened to mention this technique to the gal checking me out at a local store, and she told me they had color packs of sharpies on sale there. I couldn't resist, and came home with 2 packages of sharpies! So here are a couple of experiments I just did:
Rose
Swirl inside a diamond
Freeform border
The middle one was inspired by a round robin fabric I have from a few years back... the other two were just doodling. What I like is the soft bleeding that happens to soften the edges. I'm applying rubbing alcohol with a small artist's paintbrush, just barely dabbing it on. This is on a cotton cloth... not muslin, but more like a kettlecloth. I seem to remember that the first experiments I did were on muslin, and the markers went on easier. Here, the markers were more like a dry brush technique, and I had to kind of scrub them to get more color. I watched a video on youtube yesterday showing this technique being applied to silk scarves, so I think I'll need to dig out some blanks and see how I like using this on silk. So many things to try, so little time!!!

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