Batik

I am quite involved in 4H in our county. More so in our local club which I am co-leader of. Last year I taught a group of 8 kids how to use charcoal and we also did some work with pastels. This year I got my hands on some new information and was able to teach them the art of Batik.

Batik is an ancient Asian art that came to the west from the Indonesian Island of Java. The word Batik means writing and drawing and is done in wax. The process is to outline the design in wax and die the medium. Layers can be built up for different colors etc. One other very interesting part of the process is the use of fabric as the medium.

For the class I taught, I purchased silk, canvas and linen for the students to choose from. The linen was the fabric of choice, and after the project was complete we all agreed that silk was a better choice.

Due to time restraints we chose to do a modified version of Batik. The children created a design and painted it onto the fabric. We then covered the painting completely with wax. After it dried they wadded up the fabric to create creases in the wax for the die to penetrate. It was then dipped in the die and left to dry. After completely drying we removed the wax by ironing the fabric under a series of newspapers.

We learned a lot from what I am calling our first phase. We learned to add more wax, paint in brighter colors and that silk was the fabric of choice.

After polling the children, we will be attempting the project again. This time they understand the process and will take more time to consider the paint colors they use, and designing.

This was a really fun project. A bit messy, but exciting to see the end result appear as the wax melted away.

Here is S’s project. She hemmed and hawed over the whole process. She couldn’t decide what to draw. She finally told me she just wanted brown…and she would paint over it later. Her idea was to make it look like parchment. She will then write on it to make it look like a scroll. This was quite different from what everyone else was doing and I give her credit for thinking outside the box. The next thing for her then is to figure out what she wants to write on it and finish it up.




Here is N’s project. She decided to use her initials for a design. The N is in blue and the C is in red. Unfortunately they are hard to read from the way I took the picture. I wanted to have some back lighting to highlight the dye/wax details, and therefore lost the coloring.