Taming of The Silk

A good friend of mine , a Hua Yu ( meaning members who paint), gave me a roll of silk for me to paint on.  My friend does beautiful Gonbi style paintings, and she was showing me her paintings, and relating how different brands of  color and gouache work on silk.  She must have sensed my eagerness to try and graciously let me have some.

Unfortunately I always thought I knew better.  This is my Achilles Heel.  I felt that the silk that was given to me feels too synthetic (feels crispy and looks shiny) so I was determined to find "real" silk.
A few phone calls later checking into the usual craft stores and fabric outlets, I located some silk at the local Mill End store.  So here is my friend who knows a lot about painting on silk, and yet I wanted to be my own trailblazer.  I must also clarify here that this is not an original work by me.  I was trying to emulate some ancient painter (Ming, or Song Dynasty??).  I am sorry I can't remember who the arts was, so enthusiasts could trace back to the original and learn from the master also.

My nightmare is about to begin.

The silk I purchased is brown in color ( I want to do paintings with the antique look), soft and feels heavy in the hand.  I couldn't wait to take out the fabric from the plastic bag and began to write a few words in ink on it.  To my horror, the ink just ran off the fabric, like water on the back of a duck.         They must have used something in the dye to render the fabric water repelling, so  the silk went into the bathtub,  and I poured in a generous amount of denatured alcohol, and Resolve, and detergent.   Whatever it was in the fabric, I was determined to  extricate that.  My bathroom permeated with the scent of alcohol, reminded  me of a clinic; a clean smell.  I am glad I am not a smoker.

Well that trick did not work.  I remember my friend telling me that she had to use a gum and alum solution to size the silk before she paints on it.  To me, this was counter-intuitive.  Sizing would add to the water repelling property. 

For some reason this worked, albeit just a little bit.  The fabric would take on ink now, but it required several passes before the ink stroke registered.   I like the fact that the pigment in the gouache seems to migrate to the edge of the stroke, leaving a natural border to the stroke.  I don't know if I could attribute this artifact to the silk.

Since I had to make overlapping  passes with my brush, any brushstroke qualities became virtually indistinguishable.  The texture of the silk fabric, tandem with multi-layered strokes, made the lines take on the air of a  charcoal drawing .

Bamboo stems, which needed to portray the bouncy tensile, showed instead a string of splinters, reminiscent of a bad whittling job.

This absence of brush stroke would absolutely ruin the bamboo leaves.  The blades had to suggest an edge, a point, at the very least.   I remembered  the "Magic Brush" I bought in Hong Kong.  It has a very soft (felt) tip, behaving much like a fine brush, and is fed by disposable ink cartridge.  I bought it for use for my plein aire sessions, but it fit the bill quite nicely here.  Whatever the cartridge holds, takes to the fabric pretty well.

The final obstacle came when I was trying to mount this silk painting on canvas and discovered that ink and color was coming off the fabric.  Back to the drawing board, literally!

I need to use the silk that my friend gave me.