ArtCloth In Progress

Here is another piece I've been working on. This is a study in overdying and discharge. I'm using a good quality cotton. The first step was to dye it burnt orange. I used low water immersion with a pretty tight scrunch, so it ended up with a lot of light space. Before I overdyed it, I discharged the net pattern with bleach. Then I applied soy wax with a stencil, to keep some of the orange after it was overdyed. I overdyed it in blue.

This is a good example of some of the variables involved in mixing complements. Shouldn't I get brown by overdyeing blue and orange? In theory, yes, but since the first layer was so light, the blue and orange mixed to make an olive green color. If I wanted brown, I would have to have made the burnt orange a stronger value. Another variable is room temperature. Both the orange and the blue ended up lighter than I expected, based on the amount of dye I used. But it was very cold in the studio that day, so that likely had an impact on the depth of color.

It ended up pretty much as I wanted - with some areas of the original color, some areas of blue and some areas of the two mixed. Next step is to create more value contrast with additional printing.