Serendipitously Resisting

I was looking through some old sketch books looking for a couple of old drawings for a reference for a new project, a painted quilted wall hanging. I came across an article I had tucked into one of the books about a Japanese man who makes beautiful silk kimonos and uses a rice paste as a resist. I need a washable resist, so this sounded like something worth exploring.   After looking at a few articles, I decided, this seems to be more work than I really want to do for a resist that will only last a few days once made.  More exploring and I found mention of pastes made with  cassava roots, yams, and  flour.  I don’t want to spend a lot of time making a resist,  I want to paint!  After researching the flour paste resist I found a couple of blogs that talk about their process, basically I found that most people use equal parts flour and water and mixing it until it’s free of  lumps.  One person uses a pastry bag with a small tip to pipe  on  squiggles.  After drying overnight, she  lightly cracks it so she gets a great batik effect.   I don’t want cracks, I want nice smooth lines, so on with the experiment.   I mixed the flour and water into a smooth paste and painted it on with an old paint brush.    I also tried a medicine syringe which made a nice rounded barrier,  and also made the material pucker.   Note: do not try to straighten out the puckers, it makes the flour paste crack.   Somewhat frustrated by now, I made another search of my supply closet and finally found the commercially made water based resist I bought several years ago.

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Serendipitously Resisting