Nocturne in Green

Nocturne in Green ©2016, 40" x 21"

Thank you, Kate, for inspiring me to try something new and experimental. A lot of good information came out of this process and I know I will be referring to it in something in the future.

my inspiration

Having done a lot of monochromatic studies in grayscale, I thought I'd tackle my photographs of the campus greenhouses. I've thought about them for a long time, and thought I'd worked out a plan....but I hadn't.

I started by painting 3 layers of silk organza (and a layer of Damask linen) with shades of gray-green Dye-na-flow. Then, carefully selected weeds foliage from my drought recovered forest yard were laid out on the fabric to sun print.

The sun printed negatives from the foliage were pale negatives of the outline, so I traced the outlines and created several different stencils from the different layers.

Using Dye-na-flow in a spray bottle, I spritz the stencil with black dye.

I repeated it with the other layers using the different stencils.

Then layer by layer, the silk was added to the linen background and batting, topstitching the black stencil with black thread. Finally I added the top layer of silk organza and stitched the remaining details from the original sun printing in with a Size 20 variegated thread.

Nocturne in Green, detail ©2016, 40" x 22"