Faux Batiks with First Grade, Cleanline Resist and Lumi Inkodye

I've had some interesting results with my faux batik project.  We began by studying the batiks of Africa, which is our theme continent for this grade level.  I then gave the kids a piece of muslin fabric.  By the way, if you ever have to cut 150 or so pieces of fabric for some reason, remember it is WAY easier to tear it than to cut it.

The kids traced the outline of their fabric in their sketchbook.  Then, using that as a guide for sizing, they made a very simple drawing of an African animal, and perhaps a little decorative border.  In hindsight, I could have skipped this step, because they definitely made their drawings more detailed than they could ever recreate with the glue.  But it helped them to visualize their idea I suppose.

The fabric was see-through, so they were able to place it on top of their pencil drawing and "trace" it with the glue.  Drawing with glue is tricky, and that's why the images have to be super simple.  You may get better detail if you try using gel glue instead of white glue.  But I have that lovely crayola white glue, and I tend to reach for that most often.

After letting the glue drawings on the fabric dry, we painted over them with tempera. We used one color to help alleviate my logistical issues, but you could use as many colors as you want!

Then, the next week, when the paint was dry, I washed them in the sink with warm water.  I did this for each kid individually, so they could watch the paint come off the glue and stay on the fabric.  I didn't try to remove the glue from the fabric completely, because it would have just taken far too long.  I did that for my example, and I had to wash so much that the color faded too much for my taste.  But depending on how your operation is set up, it may be best just to throw all the batiks in your washing machine without detergent.  The tempera will stain the fabric, and the glue should be completely removed.  I haven't tried that.  I wasn't going to put 150 of them in my washing machine at home for obvious reasons.  :)

I removed the glue from the fabric completely.  But my piece of fabric was about twice the size of the ones I gave the kids.  I tried to do a little gradient with the black and the blue, but it didn't turn out very evenly.  It has sort of a tie-dye look, though.

And here's a kid example.  The color is much brighter, because they dried for a week before we washed them; plenty of time for a nice stain to set into the fabric.  And you'l notice that the white lines are a bit shiny, because the glue is still there.  The kids were happy either way, and this kept the color nice, so we went with this method.

Overall, I'm really happy with these results.  I've been wanting to do a faux batik lesson with kids for years, but I never quite found my groove with it.  I've tried this similar technique on paper before with mixed results, and I've tried the chalk and glue method too.  Here's a link to the Frank Lloyd Wright project I did a few years back.  

It is also noteworthy that if you are doing this with older kids or for yourself, you might want to try Cleanline Resist instead of glue.  It's designed more for batik.

I used a brush to apply the resist to fabric, testing how much detail I would get, and what difference the thickness of the applied resist would make.  You could then use the tempera method described above, or dye of some kind.  You might want to try the Inkodye.  It's a light sensitive dye which can be used for anything from batik to t-shirts, to faux cyanotypes.  I added the dye over my resist, laid it out in the sun and then washed in the sink.  Here's the result:

Because I'm a photography nerd as well, I am gonna have to try this with film negatives!  The instructions make it look super easy.  Now I just have to wait for the SUN TO COME OUT!  :)

Let me know about your experiments with batik!

Light Painting

Recently I asked my friends to do me a huge favor and light some sparklers in the front yard.  This was a huge favor because it was the 4th of July and it was pouring rain all day.  They were so mad at me, but then I gave them cake so it was all good.  Here are a couple of the shots I got:

So then I thought I should try this with my students.  Without fire, of course.  We set up my camera in my closet at school, so it would be plenty dark in there, and I gave them a couple of flash lights.  We discussed contour lines, and I showed images of Picasso's light paintings.  So far they are coming out extraordinarily cool.  I can't post them since they mostly have kids in them, but here is one of mine: 

Neat!  I'm using a little LED flashlight.  Laser pointers work, too, but you have to go very slowly drawing the lines, since red light travels more slowly, apparently.  The best results I've gotten were with kids tracing each others' silhouettes, and adding interesting imaginary details.  I've seen mermaids, fairies, angels, wizards, etc.  My camera shutter speed is set on BULB, and I have a remote control shutter with a lock on it, so I can click it and it will hold itself down as long as I want it to.  My F-stop is 25, the smallest it could be with my lens, and the film speed is 100.  So in an almost completely dark room, I got no ambient light in the pictures at all.

There's my Deathly Hallows.

As long as you have a camera with adjustable shutter speed and a tripod, you can do this too!

Your Pinhole is Showing!

K. Waiting with bated breath for my 120 film to come back. But I am kinda ticked off at Dury's. Seriously people? Too expensive. You really have to charge twice as much as Walgreens for processing? THEN forget to put in my CD that you promised? That's it. I'ma do it myself, punks. Well, I'll get there at some point. For now the cashier at Walgreens is just gonna have to learn that when she sees me come in, it's time to page, "Customer assistance at the Photo desk..."

Now I have a darkroom. It's pretty ghetto, but it works just fine. I'll explain in detail shortly. Of course, I've discovered that to process my own film is a much more complicated task than

making prints. Maaaaaybe I will just sneak into the photo lab at MTSU.

I'm really not coherent right now it seems. Today on the way to Dury's I thought, "Hey I've only got 4 frames left on the Holga...I'll just take a couple shots on the way and drop off that roll, too." But the problem was it was pouring rain, as it has been all day, and will apparently be all week.

There's this awesome dilapidated barn on my way to school, and I've been wanting to shoot there for a long time. Today I had an excuse.

So I had Ry drive up and park out of sight from the road, and I got out and dragged out my two Holga 120CFNs, one purple (my inner child is pleased) and loaded with 120 film, and the other modified with 35mm, and my Canon TLb. I took a bunch of shots. I got soaked, covered in mud, and I'm sure I got several more bug bites.

But that barn is beautiful. It was such a surreal experience to be in a place that seems forgotten by time, with the sound of rain falling through the skeletal roof. It wasn't littered with beer cans and soggy trash...not a hideout for teenagers or shelter for some wayward hobo. I felt like I was intruding on ghosts. I'm worried that the pictures will be screwed up because I had to set the shutter speed on 30 due to the dim light, and I didn't have a tripod. But at least I finally got to check the place out. Who knows how long it will stay there before it's torn down?

The funny thing is, Ryan stayed in the car. HE is the real photographer, supposedly. And he

wasn't interested. I asked him to park a little closer and he grinned at me and said, "Ah Katie. She suffers so much for her art." :)

But my parter-in-crime and I did make some fantastic mischief yesterday. He made a pinhole camera as a demonstration for his speech class, and we finally got to try it out. It's basically a shoe box with a tiny hole poked through a piece of aluminum, and a cardboard "shutter" over the hole. After painting the inside of the box black, and making it light-tight with black tape, we put 5x7 photo paper inside it, sat it down in my backyard, and exposed the paper.

Then in the "darkroom," we developed the paper, and there was a negative image of what the pinhole saw. The pinhole allows for a wide angle and infinite depth-of-field. After scanning the prints and inverting them in Photoshop, the positive images looked like this:

Ryan in the yard: 7 minute exposure.

Sidewalk and house: 12 minute exposure

Evergreen Cemetery: 16 minute exposure.