HOW TO PAINT ON SILK

Are you ready to accept the challenge and the pleasure of your relationship with silk?
silk painting classes available

How to Paint on Silk basic materials:
white silk, resist (gutta), silk paints, brushes, wooden frame.

How to Paint on Silk:  The Process and Technique of Painting on Silk, by Graziella

Silk has invited me into an intimate relationship.  On contact it is soft and yielding, natural, lustrous, and seemingly fragile while it is strong enough to be a parachute.

My work starts when I stretch the pure white silk on a horizontal wooden frame.  I make the silk taut and it is now ready; this is my white "canvas".

I open myself up to a second invitation from the silk. This time I lose myself in the free flow of designs and creation,  to the infinite range and possibilities and expressions  that  come  from my inner world. The  silk

 How to paint on silk
Stretched Silk Forms the Blank "canvas"
demands freedom and discipline, inspiration and technique, and beyond that it demands that I surrender to the process.  A momentary distraction which can cause an accident can dissolve hours of work and concentration, for it is not possible to rectify mistakes.
 

How to Paint on Silk
Graziella Painting on Silk
 

 I use the "resist" (gutta) to enclose the designs, improvising freely directly on the silk.  The silk paint is then put within the confines of the gutta designs. Shapes, textures, shading, colors, dilutions, are varied effects weave into a story that that unfolds harmoniously with the silk, with the subtle inner flow of the silk, and with my life force.

The silk which now embodies the designs and dyes wants me to facilitate the permanence of that relationship.  I carefully roll the silk in white paper and place it in a steamer for  a few hours.

The heat and steam brighten the colors and render them permanently fast so that they will not fade.

I now pass my hand-painted silks onto you (if you would like them) so that you can wear then, drape them, or hang them on your wall.  Regardless of how you choose to invite the hand-painted silks into your life, I hope that they inspire you.

Graziella
How to paint on silk