Question from Brigitte: Hello Teena. I’ve been painting on silk for years. I took a “break” for a couple of years – too much work to do… – I began again yesterday. I drew with quite thick lines of gutta and let them dry overnight. I just started painting this morning – and to my shock, the silk paint (not watered down at all) is bleeding through the gutta outlines. I’m careful not to use too much at a time and not go over the lines (my paintings are quite intricate.
The only thing that I did differently this time was to iron the silk before using it with a dry iron as it was quite wrinkled. Could that be the problem?
Hi again. I’ve figured it out. The problem actually was that I ironed the silk before applying the gutta. It was a huge waste – but that’s life.
Answer: Hi Brigitte, I just found your messages on FB.
Yes I always iron wrinkled white silk before painting a design on with steam-set silk dyes. This will make sure the design turns out well.
So that can’t be the problem – ironing helps the silk to lay flat so that Gutta and Outliners will flow smoothly. If there are wrinkles, and the silk is not ironed, that can create “breaks” in the Gutta outline where it goes over a sharp crease.
If you have not painted for several years, were your silk dyes and Gutta kept well away from sunlight in a cool, dark cupboard?
That can also cause a lot of problems for silk painting products.
If I haven’t used a bottle of dye or outliner for a while, I like to roll the bottle between my hands to “reactive” it – this is nothing technical, it’s just something which I do 🙂
I would also do a new test piece of silk, smaller, maybe 6×6″. I would pour some of the Gutta into a small glass jar and add a very small amount of water to thin it and loosen it up a bit. I’d roll that closed jar around in my hands to warm it up a bit, then pour it into the Gutta small squeezy bottle.
I’d let that dry for an hour or so, then paint with my steam-set silk dyes, and see how the Gutta holds up.
Keep me posted on your experiments 🙂 Best of luck!
