upcycled cotton pants, immersion dyed & hand painted, 2017

As is so often the case, using less-favourite colours caused me to more easily see their potential; so I used red and turquoise as the base, with a bit of additional fuchsia, the basic colour scheme from my last batch of dyeing, which I did around this time a year ago, in 2016. (Besides I was waiting on the yellow dye to show up...) Unlike the item shown last time, these are dyed using a true low-immersion (pour-over) technique. After batching, rinsing, and drying, I made up some thickened dye for hand-painting, and applied the henna patterns with a jacquard bottle. A hint: for good colour using dharma's non-alginate thickener superclear, mix the dye powder 50/50 with chemical water^[1] as this thickener is not anything as aggressive as sodium alginate.^[2]

closeup for the front legs.

In addition to practicing on the fly henna designs, I also drew with both hands, a facility I have been trying to develop to avoid fatigue with stiff henna cones. All in all, I'm very happy with these:)

Aaaaaaaaaand, that's as far as I got with the page I made back in Oct17. I didn't even realize there was a second image till I created the intro, and saw it in the edit page:)

Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.