003 How to Paint on Silk Podcast About Gutta and Outliners

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Siklk Painting Video created in 2018 by Teena Hughes
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Hi, this is Teena Hughes from how-to-paint-on-silk.com

For a minute there, I almost forgot where I was 🙂

Hello everyone. How are you?

I hope you are absolutely fabulous. All right, today is Podcast 003 and I’ve got a couple of questions from people that I’d like to share with you.

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The first one is from Ishita who says, “Your mail arrived at just when I was fretting over another lot of my scarves, which came out of the steamer and the colors had bled over each other. Again, please help — it seems that the present lot of Pebeo Guttas are not holding their lines very well. I have to apply them as very thick lines, otherwise they leak. Any tips on getting thinner lines?”

Ishita – I really feel for you! Over the years I’ve had dramas with Guta and resists – and dyes -and silk, and quite often it’s nothing that you’ve done wrong.

It’s quite possibly something that happened in the manufacturer.

So first of all, thanks so much for taking the time to write back to me. I really appreciate it.

Now with the Pebeo Gutta — I’ve never used that brand, but I do know that each brand of Gutta or resist can react differently in the different climates around the world.

Now this might sound weird, but bear with me for a minute.

They can be affected by hot and cold weather and the temperature of the room where they are left to dry.
They can also be affected by different brands of silk dye and silk paint.
So make sure you read the instructions very, very carefully on the Gutta manufacturer information sheet or pop over to their website to find out more.

Now all Gutta lines need to be thick enough to prevent dye flooding through them. If you’re like me, you like very, very fine black lines as well.

But this took me years to master and every Gutta is different. Every batch, even from the same company can be different. And sometimes they’re not noticeable at all that there’s a problem with them.

So maybe it’s a bad batch of Gutta. This is the first thing that pops into my head.

I think you should contact the supplier and ask if anyone else has the same problem.
Now I’m sending you lots of luck and please do let me know how you get on. I’ve got my fingers crossed for you. Cheerio for now, Teena.

Okay – onto my next question.

The next question is also about Gutta and this comes from Jackie.

Jackie says in her email, “The thing I struggle with is doing the Gutta. I’m not good at drawing and prefer an actual picture rather than an abstract. I know that you can trace the design, but I’m not good at it. I also get thick and thin lines in the outline. I did do a course and I have all of the notes for types of methods of dyes, salt, et cetera, but this was for mostly abstract but did not get – I did not get enough practice on the Gutta to get a handle on it. The other thing is that I have not done any silk painting for a couple of years as I hit a wall when doing the design myself, I think I just lost my confidence. I was hoping that if I did a session with you that might get me going again. I hope you have a great Christmas. This was a long time ago, of course, a couple of months and managed to have some restful time as well. Signed. Jackie December 2018.”

Jackie, I really feel for you when you’ve lost your confidence in painting — that’s hard to get over and get out of, but there are some simple things to do.

So let me just say, first of all, thanks so much for taking the time to reply to my inquiry that I sent out and now the Gutta, the pain in the life of a silk artist.

I’ve had quite a few emails about Gutta and I’m wondering if it might be possible to set up a Skype or Zoom.uz like a video chat room to hold a short course on how I use my outliner.

PS – I don’t use Gutta anymore.

I use outliner, but it’s the same techniques.

I could cover some of the tips and tricks I’ve learned over the past 30 years.
I could also include lessons on how to draw around shapes on silk for those like you who prefer to have specific designs rather than freehand.

Now I have an idea forming in my head and thanks to these emails that I’ve been receiving, I might try to host my first webinar very, very soon.

It might depend on who contacts me and we’ll just try one and see how it goes. But whatever we do, I will record it for those who can’t attend as well. I can go over all the questions I’ve received on this webinar and also see if there’s any others who’d like to try my holding a short course online face-to-face. That would be so cool.

It’s something I’ve wanted to do for years and now the technology is finally here.

Woohoo! Okay. Thank you Jackie!

You’ve helped me clarify a few things I can do to help even more people than I had planned.

I’ll be checking out the webinar software in the next few days or few weeks and I’ll be letting everyone know.

So that’s it for this second question. Now. I do hope this has been interesting for you.

If you’ve got any comments or feedback, I would love to hear from you about Podcast 003

So pop over to the website, click on the Contact page and send me a message. That would be fantastic.
If you know how to send an audio file or voicemail, that too would be fantastic! And if you do send audio files, I’ll be able to add them into my podcasts. Now, how cool is that? That would be terrific.
In fact, if you go over to How-to-paint-on-silk.com on the right hand side of your screen, you should see a bright pink Stripe that says, “send Teena a voicemail”. If you do that, you can record a little short message and then I’ll receive it as a voicemail.

Oh, I love technology! Yay! Okay, so there’s two ways to contact me.

Do it with voicemail or click on the contact link and send me a message and it would be terrific to hear from any of you if you’d like to communicate in that way.

Alrighty, that’s it for today’s podcast.

This is the end of Podcast 003 and I look forward to chatting with you again soon.

Cheerio for now! Bye bye! Happy painting everyone! Lots of color … nice and bright. Bye.