Waterlilies on Silk

I took an EGA class Mark and Paint on Canvas and Silk  from Laura Smith. The requirement of the class was to submit a painted silk and a painted linen (or canvas) picture. I did a practice version of the silk painting before the final piece that I sent in. I can now use the practice version as a doodle cloth.

Here is an brief explanation of how this silk painting was done. I used Setasilk silk paint, on white silk. Silk paint is thin and watery and promptly soaks through the silk. An outline (e.g. the lily pads) was drawn with "resist", which is a rubber-like thin liquid that forms a dam to contain the color.  When done painting the color was set by ironing and the resist was washed off. This leaves behind a white outline that has to be covered by stitching, or worked into the design. The class gives very precise details and instructions on how to do this correctly.

For the doodle cloth, I  initially tried to cover up the resist white line with stitching - the top right lily pad (blech!)

Then I decided to paint over the resist line carefully using a small brush - and I like this effect. So that's how the top left lily pad was done. For the next lily pad I want to see if I can make it seem like that the edge of the lily pad is submerged in the water.

I used self-padding on the foreground lily petal:

Half padding on the midground petal, and no padding on the background.