Saturday, February 25, 2006

In the Lair of the Taniwha

Taniwha are mythical Maori creatures, the New Zealand equivalent of dragons. I am quite entranced by them, being a fragon person, so I've decided to put some in a quilt. They are shown in various different ways. The shapes I have adopted are from both artistic interpretations and bone carvings. I have made them all two-toned, denoting their otherwordly status, in smoky sultry colours. Accordingly, I needed a suitable background fabric but had nothing suitable. Taniwha live in water, so I wanted something with deep mysterious blues and purples, with some spooky black bits. I took the following very dull piece of dyed fabric:
Note the useful painting board, kindly made for me by Kathryn and her husband Ken. Then I spritzed it with water and applied various paints. The result (still wet) :

A far more suitable taniwha lair. It will dry lighter, but if it's too light, I'll darken it up. Tomorrow, I should be able to start placing the taniwha around.

Later: I didn't like the yellowish colour as it dried so I darkened it, but don't really like how it's turned out, so I did another from the same original piece of blue splodged fabric. Always hard to overpaint, it's not like dye. I like this one better -here's a taniwha trying it out for size.

3 comments:

Rayna said...

Oh, yes. Much better. I look forward to seeing the creatures in their natural habitat.

Kat said...

Very sultry colour - you have certainly been busy this afternoon - I just managed to fall asleep on the couch.

Brenda said...

Ah the serendipity of dyeing. Some days it works and other days you just end up with more candidates for overdyeing later...