Okavango Delta Aerial

Okavango Delta Aerial

Friday 16 August 2013

Working on the batik

Started the batik as planned. As you can see from this small section, the subject is a group of impala. The process of waxing around the antelope took about four and a half hours and I managed not to go wrong or drop any blobs over the design. Yeehaa! A minor miracle! 

This short video shows me starting to wax around the last impala with the tjanting (or canting) a batik tool for drawing molten wax onto the surface, in this case cotton.

For going around the antelope outlines I used two slow flowing, small sized tjantings; this gave me more control to get detail and using them in turn meant I could work with one whilst the other reheated and to block in the larger spaces around the animals I used two slightly faster flowing tjantings. The tjantings cool quite quickly once they are out of the waxpot, so working with two of each size meant I could speed the process up as I wouldn't have to wait for the tjanting to get nice and hot again each time I put it back in the waxpot.

Tomorrow, the plan is to finish waxing the cotton to protect the background and then to wash colours over the impalas. 









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