Silk painting with complementary colors of dye: blue and orange

I'm still working with the silk scarves, and having great fun playing with the color combinations. I've done a bunch so far where the dye colors I choose are right next to each other on the color wheel. That makes for a lovely scarf, and is a pretty safe bet.

But I took color theory class awhile ago, and I recalled that if you use colors that are across from each other on the color wheel you can get some neat earth tones. I decided to give it a try, and picked out the two blues I had, and the orange to go with it.

I used the two blues full strength, and then mixed each of them half and half with the orange. Then I painted swirls of color. I dripped a couple of times by mistake...so I dripped all over the scarf and called it on purpose. Then I put salt on the scarf, and let it dry. The salt pulled the dye into intricate, organic shapes. And as the dye was pulled, it separated in interesting ways.

As I was taking the salt off the dry scarf, I dripped water on it. Since the dye isn't steam set yet, that changed the pattern. Oops. So, once again I turned a mistake into a design feature, and spritzed the whole thing with water droplets.

The result of my experimentation? A very intricate patterning, that reminds me of an deep sea wonderland.


These are such fun to do! I think that completes the dozen I was working on. Now I need to let the dye set up for a day, and then I can steam set them. And then get them up in the shop, so hopefully folks will buy them. That would mean that I could get some more scarf blanks, and play some more! (I can only wear so many scarves myself, after all...)