First up - batik. I love the art form, and have developed a serious sarong addiction while I’m here. They are beautiful, and useful. While I was purchasing one from the artist in her home one day, she mentioned she also gave classes, and the next available class was on Monday - 4 days away. I said I’d be there!
Monday morning I showed up - it was the day after a holiday weekend here, and clearly she had forgotten about me and looked somewhat annoyed . . . but she quickly recovered and took me into her workshop. The workshop doubles as a family laundry area and also houses a large chicken cage. A couple of women were working at a large worktable on what I learned was to become a wedding bedspread.
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| When you do batik for a living, I guess it's natural to have pretty sheets like this. |
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| The chickens kept us company as well |
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| The beginnings of a batik bedspread |
My hostess asked if I knew what I wanted to paint, and when I said I didn’t have a clue, she barked an order at one of the older ladies who promptly brought out a large green garbage bag, glared at me, and proceeded to dump a large quantity of very wrinkled white squares of fabric on the ground. A closer look, and I realized these all had black designs drawn on them. I was told to choose one. Many of them were quite stained, so I chose a pretty design that was on a relatively clean piece of cloth, thinking that I would just be filling in colours on this. Not so much. She told me I had picked a very complicated design. Big surprise - story of my life.
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| Some of the design sheets to choose from |
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| More design options |
The cloth was pinned to the other large worktable by the cranky older lady - the tables are covered with heavy brown vinyl and some sort of quilt stuffing underneath, which means any fabric can be stabilized on them using pins. Then a piece of clean white fabric was placed on top of the designed cloth, and I was handed a pencil and told to trace the pattern. This took me about 15 minutes. During that time, I managed to warm her up a bit by chatting with her, and I learned that the designs are all drawings made by her father and they are the patterns she uses in her work. Her father has since had a stroke, and is no longer able to draw, so they are quite precious to her. The way she stores them would indicate otherwise to me, but they do things differently here.
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| Pinning the design sheet to the worktable |
After I finished the tracing, she brought out a wooden frame and proceeded to attach my cloth to it with a series of thumbtacks. At the same time, the older lady had set up a cardboard box on the ground. The box top and sides were thick with dried wax drippings, and inside the box was a contraption that seemed like a small camp stove. There was a dish of rather blackish looking stuff on top, and sitting in that was an odd looking tool. A small cushion was brought for me to sit on the floor, and the older lady showed me how to get a small bit of wax into the tool and then use it to trace wax over all my pencil marks. The tool is made of a piece of bamboo, a bit of tin that is twisted into a small cup, and a small piece of copper tubing attached to it with a tiny piece of copper wire. VERY basic.
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| Tacking the design to a wooden frame. The wax and stove are in the foreground in the old cardboard box. The red step area is where they put a cushion for me to sit on while I did the waxing. |
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| The stove, the melting beeswax and the funny little tool in the foreground. Note the wax drippings on the sides of the box. The tool is dipped in the hot wax, and then kind of 'wiped off', like taking the excess off a paintbrush before painting. |
I started tracing, and through the course of the next half hour or so I managed to trace most of the design with wax, and let several blobs fall out of the tool as well. The reason for all the wax on the box is that they use the box top as a place to remove excess wax from the tool after filling it and before applying it to the fabric. I think they were all quite amused at my ineptness with the tool, but by this time at least we were all smiling at each other and they were getting used to me being there. Only my hostess spoke any English, so there was a lot of grinning and gesturing, but I was feeling much more welcome at this point. I suspect I was entertainment for them as they did their real work.
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| Much of the design has been traced, but I needed to do some bottom bits so we had to move the fabric on the frame. This lady is the cheerier teacher! |
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| All done and ready to start painting |
Once I finished with the waxing part, the fabric was removed from the frame and placed back on the large worktable with some old burlap underneath. The older lady brought me some jars of coloured liquid, and these all had paintbrushes sticking out of them. Most of the brushes were pretty much hardened into one piece. I was told to start painting - no instruction was given, other than to tell me which colours were which. Brown was green, clear was blue, gold was yellow. It took a bit of remembering as I painted, but after about 45 minutes, I was finished.
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| Love the paint pots - cut off ends of water bottles! |
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| Getting started. Brown is green. Note the worn out burlap behind the fabric. I imagine it's had a lot of paint on it over the years. The paint is the consistency of water - very thin. |
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| All done - ready for the next step! |
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| It has to dry out in the sun before it goes to the next step. That took about 5 minutes - it was a blazing hot day. This is the little laundry room/ courtyard/work area. |
They then took the fabric and placed it into a pail with some sort of white powder. The fabric was swished around the bottom of the pail with a long stick, and as it swooshed, the ink colours changed. They then put it into another pail full of very hot water and soap, and swished it around more with the stick. This removed all the wax. At that point, the fabric was rinsed in clear water, and voila - my masterpiece was ready.
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| Swishing the fabric around in a pail with a long stick. I think it may have been a broomstick. I guess they like to stay far away from the chemicals they use. |
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| All done. The flamingos were supposed to be purple (that was the green paint!). I like it though |
It was a really fun morning and 3 hours had passed in the blink of an eye. Which is what usually happens when I’m making anything. So relaxing and enjoyable.
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| This is what my teachers accomplished while I was busy for two hours. They also managed to teach and help me at the same time. :-) |
I can imagine that if I go home to Canada, I can find all sorts of fancy tools, brushes, dyes etc. to be able to do batik at home. But it was really fun to do it the Balinese way - simple, effective tools, working outside in the family laundry room. Bliss. Just need to get that blobbing wax under control!
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| The rooster house at the compound entrance. Pretty fancy! |
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