Now I know how cats feel.

Ever since I saw this fab­ric sun print idea I’ve always want­ed to try it. I have no idea why or how it works with­out light sen­si­tive paper (just fab­ric and fab­ric paint!), it all seems real­ly mag­i­cal to me, so I real­ly want to see if it real­ly works!

Final­ly a real­ly sun­ny day came upon us and I grasp the oppor­tu­ni­ty :D We have a west-fac­ing bal­cony and only get direct sun­light on it in the late after­noon. And it’s only a strip of sun­light because of the bal­cony rail­ing. I used can­vas and some watered down screen print­ing ink for fab­ric, because that’s what I have.

It was also real­ly windy, so I placed stones on the leaves to keep them from being blown away. Then I thought maybe stones will make good pat­terns too, so I laid them on the wet can­vas as well.

It’s like paint­ings that make them­selves! I only had to wait two hours for them to sit in the sun. And go out 4–5 times to move the card­board with all the can­vas­es on it because the strip of sun­light was shift­ing (more quick­ly than I thought!).

And final­ly, here are the results! :D These are the two that came out a bit more clear. The edges of the leaves kept flap­ping about because it was so windy (and it’s always windy up where we are) and so it did­n’t make a good sol­id imprint. And because I used dried, pressed leaves, which did­n’t stick to the wet can­vas. I think next time I’ll try to find fresh leaves for this.

 

These two turned out less clear so I lat­er paint­ed some­thing on top of it. But here they are :D

 

After those prints were done the sun­light was com­ing into the apart­ment with the bal­cony door open, so I tried to do anoth­er print with a thin­ner kind of leaf. They stuck to the wet paint and lied per­fect­ly flat on the can­vas so I was expect­ing real­ly good prints…

 

But the sun was only there for an hour and a half, before the print was done. But the sil­hou­ettes of the leaves are still faint­ly vis­i­ble. Kind of ghost­ly. There’s some­thing I real­ly like about that, enough to make me save the image and not recy­cle the canvas.

 

The two red/orange ones that did­n’t come out clear­ly I did recy­cle. They turned into these…

 

 

I was try­ing to see if mask­ing flu­id would work on raw can­vas. I’ve only ever used it on paper, which is what it’s meant for. So! The ver­dict? It’s a no. Mask­ing flu­id does NOT come off of raw can­vas. It came off of these paint­ings because they had a thin coat of screen print­ing ink on them to start with, but still, it took me a long time to rub (and some­times scrape) off the dried mask­ing flu­id, which left my index fin­ger­tip raw and dyed blue and its nail bro­ken. But it’s worth the effort, I think! Because the colours turned out great :D (and bro­ken nail grows out in a few short days)

Mask­ing flu­id, how­ev­er, works like a dream on primed can­vas. More on that lat­er! :D

Hap­py Thursday!