Description
Lobster Claws, Original Silk Painting
Lobster Claws (Heliconia) are native to Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela, Costa Rica, and Ecuador. They are also known as False Bird of Paradise Flowers. They grow in tropical forests and the brightly coloured bracts collect water and act as drinking vessels for birds. I love the vibrant pinky reds against the backdrop of lush greens.
My paintings are mainly painted on pure Chinese habotai 8 silk with specialist silk paints. I start each work with a drawing on paper and then trace the image onto a piece of white silk stretched onto a wooden frame. I then apply a special paint called gutta, which contains natural latex called gutta-percha, over my traced lines. This creates a resistive barrier through which the coloured ink will not flow. I apply the coloured ink with a brush and use salt dropped into the ink whilst wet to created textured effects.
The finished painting is removed from the wooden frame, ironed to fix the colour in the fabric and stretched onto acid-free mountboard ready for framing.
You can see a time lapse video of me painting here.
The original painting will come mounted to fit a 70 x 1000 cm frame. The actual image size is 50 x 80 cm. Frame is not included.
