Day 2 ~ going in with the paint!

I have been trying to find more information about the Jovi Softywax fabric crayons but there doesn't seem to be a lot out there in way of tutorials, or techniques.

I have been using fabric transfer crayons for years but the Jovi ones are different the colours are truer, not vibrant like the transfer ones, they are nice to work with, soft and high in pigment, I just want to know a little more about them but I will just have to experiment.

So today I'm going in with the paint!
Although I have a batik pot set up and ready to go I'm still looking for quicker easier ways to do these panels, rather than covering them with wax. So I started with a little test piece, it occurred to me as I was sketching this up with the pencils and the crayons that both the crayons and the watercolour dyes require a heat fix

so I painted the little sample, you can see the wet spreading but not so much of the colour

so happy with that I started on the first panel, I figured I could control the paint a bit better on a larger scale and dry the edges as I go along to prevent further seepage

I could then heat fix the areas I want to keep and wash the rest away before doing the background.

I tried this theory out with my little sample and my clover mini iron

I used another piece of fabric to protect my little ironing board, you can see some of the dye from the crayon did transfer.

but what I didn't think about was the heat from the hair dryer, which fixed the areas that had run !

I had already used it on the top areas of the panel so I will just have to wait and see how it goes

 I continued on with the painting

 did the whole panel with as much control as possible without using the hairdryer

 I shall let it dry now, naturally

on the washing line, before deciding how to proceed,
 I'll probably wax around the edges next to get the background painted.

A break for lunch and I'll begin the next panel, I'm not too fussed really if there are runs and its not perfect, that's watercolour! I'm not aiming for perfection, just some nice colourful panels, I'm just happy see how they work out