Batik Class, Jakarta

So today was my second day in Jakarta visiting my parents! I'll be here for a little over a month. We'll be going to Singapore, and when my sister and her boyfriend join us, we're all going to Bali and other parts of Indonesia. This week we're taking it easy.

Today my mom and I visited the Musim Tekstil in Jakarta, which showcased some amazing batik. Batik is the traditional fabric of Indonesia, decorated using wax and dye. Different motifs and colors hold different social implications/regional significance. Unfortunately, there were no captions detailing any of the pieces (I would have liked to know more about the different methods used), and some areas were terribly lit. We whizzed through the main section of the museum in a mere ten minutes, the second in probably fifteen-twenty. My mom said it's funny how so much money is put into shopping malls but not the museums. Cool experience either way.

The museum offers batik classes, which we, of course, hopped on. The class cost less than $10 for the two of us combined! Amazing.

The workshop was this nice naturally lit, sort of open air room. We first chose our motifs from a pile of probably forty. I had feared having to BS my own batik design, you know, just because I wanted to focus more on understanding the method. We then traced the design with pencil onto a white cotton square. The pencil lines disappear by the end of the whole process.

We put our squares into embroidery hoops and sat down to trace back over our lines with a tjanting, a wooden handled tool with a tiny metal cup with a tiny spout, out of which the wax seeps. My mom and I both spilled a few drops of wax on the fabric. I also spilled wax from the tjanting onto my hand twice (I'm not talking a few drops), and dude...it kind of killed. The girl helping us/our instructor gave me what I am guessing was some aloe vera gel. Spilling must not be uncommon.

We traced our designs with the wax on both the front and back (something I found annoying because it's hard to tell what parts you have and have not gone over on the back). Batik is a wax resist dyeing technique, which means all parts not covered with wax get dyed.

Shit is tedious!

Tjantings.

Our instructor painted wax around the edges of our squares. After it dried, she cracked the wax with her hands. You'll see why later, though I'm sure you can guess.

We didn't have to get our hands dirty with dyeing. Not that the first part wasn't messy enough. It didn't take long for the dye to take.

My mom's piece. Our instructor suggested we write our names on the side. Easier said than done, my friend.

Haha, see the drips? Anyway, I thought the cracked wax came out awesome!

So it turns out that batik is a headache-inducing craft that demands patience and fine attention to detail (both of which I apparently lack), but if you take your time, you can come up with something quite beautiful (which I didn't). Not sure if I'll be filling up a tjanting with hot wax any time soon, but this experience has opened my mind to wax resist dyeing techniques... The wax-cracking thing seems manageable.

Thread Print

We turned in our first batch of projects this evening. I turned in a t-shirt, tank top, two pillows, and a tote bag I sewed earlier today. Tonight we practiced using opaque inks on dark grounds. I played around with this thread since I had a needle on hand, sewing it back and forth through this piece of vellum. I was going for an irregular stripe kind of look.

Kind of fun! I flipped the screen to make the print repeat lengthwise.

Door shot to show the scale. And just how wrinkly the fabric is.

I spent most of the class sewing the vellum/burning it into the screen. Next class, I plan to play around with this print more. Maybe criss-cross the design? We'll see! Not sure exactly what I'll do with these prints.

Latest SD101 News

Remember that KNOT graphic from my first project? I printed it on a t-shirt for Mack, and it turned out pretty nicely! Pictures later.

In class last night, we experimented with this amazing marbelization technique. (Pictures another time, also) I, however, was itching to burn and print this artwork, created by my sister, Kia. This piece has been on my mind since I first saw it. Poetic diagrams...I eat this shit up.

Here it is printed on vellum, ready for burning:

I was able to squeeze in just a couple of test prints before class ended.

As you can see, the prints are patchy in areas. I'll have to check out my screen and see if this from my weak arms (ho ho ho) or not everything burning through.

My professor has scheduled a trip to her company's loft studio in SoHo. She's going to explain to us how to set up a home studio. I'm itching to know all the details because for the semester, we are only able to print in the classroom/studio space, which is not available for use outside of class time.

Project 1

Last week in my screen printing class we created our artwork, or positive. Since this is an experimental course, we explore creating our positive with a variety of things. Yarn, leaves, feathers, paper, and basically anything that's flat and opaque can be taped to acetate or vellum to create the graphic. Cool, right? This also includes simply using an opaque marker to draw.

I initially planned to use Photoshop or Illustrator to achieve a certain quality (I wasn't feeling the organic thing for once), but got too frustrated and gave up. See above this adorable pug picture. I just loved the positive/negative quality of the black and white pug! (It's not my photo, though, so I felt weird using it.) I couldn't get right on the computer with live tracing, etc. I attempted to trace it but didn't know what approach to take.

My fallback plan had been to play around with thread/string, though when I dug around my craft boxes, I also found these black felt letters that I once used to decorate a tote bag. (Remember these? haha, why would you)

So this is what I came up with...disclaimer: it's a beginner course, not a class full of artists, and this was our first project so...yeah it's not super cool, I know.

We printed last night and were encouraged to play around with overprinting image over image, which I actually really liked (see below) The screens we were using are for fabric, rather than paper, but to get the hang of printing, we printed on paper, with the option to print onto t-shirts later (I decided to wait until next class).

We had to choose at least three lighter/bright colors (of course plain black would have been my first pick). My screen started to dry out, so a couple of print weren't too crisp. I also wasn't super careful about paint getting on the bottom of the screen, so blah blah blah disclaimer disclaimer!

I think it's best that I didn't end up doing something via computer. Why not experiment?

Lots of fun! My Japanese course getting cancelled, allowing me to take this course instead, was maybe a blessing in disguise.

(All photos courtesy of my iPhone)