Monday, May 9, 2011

Batik

 I call this project, crayon batik.  It's super simple!
 We melt peeled crayons in tuna cans and then paint the melted crayon onto a fabric drawing.
 I use old white sheets to create batik work on.  I find illustrated kids books provide great inspiration for imagery.  I have the kids draw onto the fabric using sharpie pens, this provides a coloring book style image to fill in with color.  We iron off the wax, between newspaper, when we're done coloring.
The fabric is left with simply the dye from the crayons.  This is always super successful!

9 comments:

  1. WOW. You mean to say you use the crayon as both the resist AND the dye? The Sharpie ink, then, works like the black fill ink? I am very much intrigued by this method. o_o

    Thank you very much for sharing!

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  2. OK my understanding is you use a sharpie to draw out picture then melt caryons in tuna cans and paint in picture with melted crayons then put newspaper on painting you just did and iron it to get off wax?

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  3. From what i can gather is you get the kids to draw their picture with the sharpie pen. Next you get them to colour it in with the melted crayons. Then you iron out the wax that has been left from the melted crayon and you get the super looking artwork.

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  4. Sounds like a great idea...especially for introducing kids to Batik. I love your paintings of the flower, tropical fish and the butterfly above.

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  5. What do you use to get the white outline design on the pink flower please? Does the sharpie pen ink wash out or did you use a white pen or crayon? Sorry I am a bit confused by that part. :-)

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  6. I discovered you can use a white grease pencil or Elmer’s gel glue to create the white.

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  7. I am a little confused by how the white is established also, and guess I will need to experiment with glue or grease pencil and maybe use a white marker. Meanwhile, the sharpies lines act as resist --- the crayons won't penetrate them and will lift off when the piece is ironed at the end of the project. After ironing, the sharpies lines can be made more contrasting by tracing over the original lines. This technique is fun and actually is an art form. Thanks.

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  8. I love this, and would like to do it at my care home: but I can't see how you can melt the wax safely?

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  9. You do not have permission to use my image, the clownfish batik,please delete from your site

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