Team member feature: KavitaKriti

KavitaKriti - http://kavitakriti.etsy.com

I love Indian ethnic designs and wanted to incorporate them into the scarves I paint. India is a melting pot and each state offers something exquisite and unique from the types of clothes worn by the people of the region, to their language, and their arts and crafts. Even if I wanted to I would not be able to represent all Indian art forms because they are infinite in number but I want to try and the scarves I paint are my way of doing that. Each scarf comes with a hang tag describing my inspiration source so you can learn a little bit more about the art, tradition or trend I am inspired by. Not only do I want to offer women a new choice in their most treasured accessory but I also want to promote the gorgeous work done by the artisans of India, most of which may not have gained exposure outside the Indian subcontinent.

Currently I am focusing on painting indian motifs like peacocks, paisleys, elephants, mandalas and henna designs as well as painting indian textile, indian embroidery and sari border designs.

Take a peek at KavitaKriti's artistic process

This week I was in the mood to play with silk and I captured the process in a storyboard below. I tried several techniques and basically just let the silk do all the work :)

Dribbling paint, watermarks, salting, gutta work, watercolor effect, brush strokes, paint spots... basically all around good fun!

My idea was to paint alternating squares of blue and black blockprint designs with a border all around the scarf. I was going for a blockprint-batik effect and so started with two blockprint designs and traced them on the silk using clear gutta. Once the gutta dried it was on to the painting.

My color palette consisted of a sky blue, sort of lime green and black. 

I started with the blue blockprint squares and then filled-in the border. The green seemed too green (if that is at all possible :)), so I dulled it down with a little watered-down blue overpainted on the green and then finally gave the entire border a rinse of black resulting in this lovely dull henna color.

Next I filled in the black blockprint squares. All of the silk dyes were painted on dry silk and I let the colors flow in every which direction. The gutta lines were not solid so the colors mixed and mingled in every way possible.

The dry silk probably stopped the dye from flowing around too much ofcourse. Finally I did a little bit of salting for texture in some of the squares and watermarks in others. I did not wipe away any of the paint spots purposely leaving them in for an uneven look. The final pictures of the scarf are displayed below and I'm quite happy with the final result. The colors work well together and the blockprint design is interesting.