Adapting your tools

I'm constantly fascinated by the way creative people adapt their tools or claim things completely unrelated to their projects and turn them into viable instruments.

Having been a "purest" has not exempted me from this.

The yellow dhoti is a case in point.

Old plastic ball point pens have been used for dots and circles. Caps from cosmetics and herb jars ended up becoming either templates or actual tiny blocks. Ditto for pin-heads, yes pins dipped in paint and applied carefully give a series of rather delicate dots for additional embellishment! My blocks are primarily polystyrene carved into the motifs needed. I've cheated by over-painting areas where the "dye", if this was indeed a dyed work has been rather too thin. And while, I haven't set about trying to execute this project as a hand painted example of period Indian textile embellishment - an entirely specious area of research for the moment in the context of historically correct re-enactment garb for myself, I have found that specific sections do require finer details to be put in by hand somehow.

Yesterday I was refining the pallu and finishing off the jagged spires and decided to attempt some linear work with a firm brush. Simple really. The only trouble was that my brushes are not geared for this kind of work. Using a metal ruler placed on it's back to give me a raised edge to guide the brush, I found that the thickness of the bristles was ultimately too broad and rough for the delicacy desired in outlining the spires. By accident, I realised that a brush that was actually too stiff to work with in the traditional way worked best.

Developing this idea further, I glued the bristles of one pony tailed brush, usually for oil or acrylic painting, together and let it dry after compressing the edge and squeezing it flatter to form an oblong, nib-like shape. Works a treat!

Now why didn't I think of it sooner?

The result was a sharper edging, in the range of 2pt size and unexpectedly easy to work with. (Working a second colour against an area previously stamped and subsequently set, enhances my control of the detail being added as well.)

This does naturally mean that my earlier thought about only doing one pallu becomes moot and another two weeks has been added to the overall project time! It also means that there will be a four sided border of elephants between the pallus with the central field of the fabric sporting the geometric cross motifs.

I've not yet settled on the final size for the elephants within their borders but am slowly moving towards that inexorably. I do have to decide whether I am going to manipulate the direction of the elephants, in extent examples circa the 13thC the top border, which forms the waist band of the dhoti is upside down by our reading and moves in the opposite direction to that of the hemline. And while I'd dearly love to place the elephants along the pallus in groups of two, facing each other - I haven't found any evidence for this treatment in period. Later certainly but the question is "how much later"? So I will not be risking it in this project. Like my old Art Directors would say in the studio of my youth, KISS. (Keep it simple stupid!)