Still Not Through

I have been working on this piece for th years. 

This is the way it looked in 2011. The metallics don't photograph well, but it was about as glittery as you can get without being a five year old drama queen. It is fairly large, 48 X 50 inches or so. 

I printed over it with a floral stencil in a softer metallic silver in 2013. See the image below. 

Still didn't work for me. 

In 2014 I cut it in half. Then added a red, purple and white metallic path.

The path flows across both pieces. I still don't think it's finished. The initial issue was the block printed paisley design. It was too blocky. I've already said the metallic was too bold. I like the stencil and the path, but the piece doesn't sing, under exposed image or in reality. I'm going to work on it over the next several weeks and I'll keep you posted. 

Because I work so much with dye, acrylic and oil based inks take some adjustment for me. Dye is transparent, one color goes over another and creates a new color. Acrylics and oil are opaque and cover up what is underneath, well mostly, you can thin them. 

I think this piece needs some blue, green or purple. Probably purple to complement the gold, and some geometrics to compliment the florals. 

This is the top of the reworked piece. 

Cause I don't like it now, impossible to mess it up. Hmmmmm. If you are thinking should have left well enough alone, keep it to yourself, too late now. 

Update: I think the half of the original that I haven't touched has found a home. I am truly pleased with the progress on the reworked half. Further Update: the second half has not found a home, another work has, but I have plans for using the remaining section as one center for this new work. 

I've begun to write blog posts and then schedule them for posting at a later date. This one was written far enough ahead that I've begun to work on the piece pictured. Originally the piece was entitled "Muslimah" in honor of a truly beautiful friend of a friend I had the pleasure of meeting. I think of the new work as "Muslimah Reborn". Sure, it will get another name, because it is part of the ongoing series Stockton Varanasi. The metallic geometrics kind of put the piece in line with Parallel Universe. But we'll see. Naming is not one of my strong suits. 

This is close up view of the new bottom third. 

Okay, what I did. If you take a look at the second image in this post you will see a red path. I sliced the path out. On one of the left over pieces, I started with my favorite motif - triangles and using Lumiere metallic fabric paints, free hand painted the fabric design. 

The next piece, in the original this was the top of the work, but I like it better on the bottom because of the weight of the black, I applied hand cut freezer paper stencils in irregular rectangular shapes, but in an ordered repeat. I used Jacquard textile paint mixed with water and extender to paint a thin coat of black over the stencils. 

Another view of the bottom third. I love the way the floral stencil is visible under the black wash. 

Getting the right mix of water to extender to paint is critical when painting over freezer paper stencils. Too much water and the mixture leaks under the stencil. Too little and the mixture doesn't flow correctly. If the fabric has a lot of fabric paint on it, getting a crisp print is an issue, if you want it to be. I'm at the point where this doesn't bother me anymore. The stencil does not iron smoothly on the painted surface and you get little dribble and drabs of paint under the stencil area. 

Top and bottom so far pinned to a plain white background for taking photographs. What, who, me leave a large open area of white space? Next life. 

This is the top and the bottom pinned to a white background. The fun part of this is being able to create several pieces for the center of the work and seeing which one works best. Even better, with the magic of PhotoShop, I can create lots of different works from these two pieces by adding different centers and moving all of them around. Stay tuned.