Charlie Slate's Stone Blog

All the students went through the same steps as outlined below.  Please do ask them about the batik process. 

Rachel’s batik was so ambitious, and she was being so careful, I thought it would be the perfect demo project.  Here’s her batik, with every step documented along the way.

Step 1:  Rachel used a photograph of two zebras.  She abstracted the picture to use three colors plus white.  She planned colors that would mix in the process and yield results she liked.  She outlined her drawing with a sharpie, then shaded in the colors.  On one side she drew boxes and filled in her color choices for the plan.

Step 2:  Rachel traced onto muslin fabric the areas that were to remain white, using a water color marker.

Step 3:  She painted hot wax into the designated drawn areas.

Step 4:  Her first and lightest color, beige, was used to dye every part that was not to be white.

Step 5:  Rachel used her cartoon to trace all the areas that would remain beige.

Step 6:  She applied hot wax to the beige designated areas.

Step 7:  The second color, blue, was dyed.  Every part of the fabric other than the white and beige parts, were dyed.  The blue covered the light beige, mixing beige and blue for a somewhat duller shade of blue than the dye used.

Step 8:  Rachel next used a water color marker to draw the areas to remain blue.

Step 9:  Wax to protect the blue areas. 
Step 10:  Dye the third and darkest color, in this case black.  Since the black dye mixes with the two previous colors dyed, it won’t be perfectly black, but kind of purplish.  (I forgot to photograph this step, between dyeing and removing the wax.)

Step 11:  Remove the wax.  The batik was boiled for a few minutes, until the wax floated to the top of the pot.  Then the batik was plunged into cold water, and excess loose wax bits scraped off.  It’s done!  

If you would like a bright colored T-shirt instead of the beige you got on your hand-stitched shibori, here’s what you can do.  Ask your parents to pick up a box of Rit dye from the grocery store.  That will work in a pot on the stove, and you can use materials you already have on hand.  That’ll give you a nice, bright color with a black design.

To make your shirt even more spectacular, repeat the hand-stitching with a new design in beige, to compliment the black, and then dye a bright color.

Here’s what I did with my T-shirt. 

D.E. Students did a hand-stitched design on black t-shirts.  These were pulled up as tight as possible, tied off, and placed in boiling discharge bath.  That part I did at home.  Here are the results.  Click on the image to see it whole.

Normally, I teach this to adults only, as there are fumes involved in the steaming process.  Mrs. Littlejohn gave me the idea of doing chicken prints, though, and it was too good to miss.  So my students carved feathers from EZ Cut blocks, in a variety of shapes and kinds.  They used the feathers to fill in different areas of their chickens, choosing colors to use in each area.  All the feathers were shared, so everyone had something they could use to make the right feather type.  A few students chose to make fence posts, or grass, or clover.  We also had a piece of chicken wire for direct printing.  They protected their skin with vinyl gloves and I took everything home to steam.  Check ‘em out!

The last picture is a compilation of those prints that looked like actual chickens:

Design Excursion students did two hour “make up” classes in marbleing in January and February.  Just about everyone ended up with 4-6 gorgeous papers, two eggs each, and a number of art cards.  Here are a few of the card “triples.”

Encore students are finished with their linocuts now.  This year we did one carving of a circle segment and printed 6 to make a full circle.  Check these:

My Design Excursion encore classes are going swimmingly, with both groups working fast and furious.  In fact, we’re ahead of schedule, which means I may be able to throw an extra project into the mix.

Paste Papers turned out great.  Every student took home notecards from their papers and they made a beautiful bulletin board.  When the board comes down, I’ll send home all but two of each student’s papers.  Those two will be held in reserve for the origami boxes project down the road.  And since the Yearbook cover design was due October 31, I used the paste papers for the cover.  Everyone can be proud of their contribution to the gorgeous cover.

Basketry has gained in popularity as students acheive self-sufficient status.  And a few are so far along that they’ll be finishing up soon.  Hopefully, I’ll be able to put up a basket display at school this year.  When students run out of basket materials (as they will with the completion of the first basket) parents may want to purchase more rope and yarns.  Your child can guide you as to what they need.  If you’d like for your child to check out the basket in progress to work on over Thanksgiving or Winter Break, you’ll need to promise that it will return in time for the next encore class. 

As for shibori, I’ve never had faster working students.  They all finished two arashi shibori projects in only three weeks!  That’s a record.  The cotton samples will remain at school to be used as the material for the screen printing project later.  The silks will be on display for a week or two, then will come home.

Next up will be linocut, which we begin Tuesday, November 8.  This one will probably take awhile to finish.  They may or may not be completed before Winter Break.  I’ll keep you posted.