By Belle (Martha) Heppard, M.D.
Introduction
Watercolor, as a medium for batik, is a relatively new phenomenon. Artists began working in this medium by at least the millennium and I was introduced to it shortly thereafter. While not initially familiar with watercolor batiking, I first learned of the traditional batiking of textiles when I was 11 years old. I grew up in Honolulu, Hawai’i and attended Hawai’i School for Girls (now known as La Pietra) for junior high school. During my junior and senior years of high school, I attended the then named Punahou Schools. Because of the strong Asian influence in Hawai’i, Asian art and textile techniques were an integral part of my school’s art curriculum. Textile batiking flourished in Asia during the 1970’s, and thus, my classmates and I learned to batik fabric as part of our art curriculum.
After following my passion for art for many years and trying to develop a soft style, I was introduced to watercolor batik on rice paper. This method—the technique of batik that I had known for decades—was just what I needed.
I fell in love with the process and outcome. Although I still paint in the traditional methods of watercolor and oil, I specialize in painting watercolor batiks on rice paper. The artist who showed me how to create a watercolor batik picked it up from a magazine a few years earlier. While I am not the final authority or originator of painting watercolor batiks on rice paper, I have carried this technique a step further than most other fine-art batik artists.
My book, Watercolor Batik; An Artist’s Guide to Watercolor Batik on Rice Paper, will introduce you to the history of batik, the supplies and needed set-up, along with the technique of watercolor batik on rice paper. Four demonstrations are included, complete with the colors and brands of watercolor used and step-by-step instructions. Additionally, I reveal tips on how to touch up a painting after the batiking process is completed. I also address care for your finished painting, including how to mount and mat it.
History of Batik
Technically, a batik is a fabric dyed in a wax-resist technique. It is commonly and casually the term applied to describe the wax-resist method used to create the batik cloth or textile.
After researching the subject, batik seems to have spontaneously developed in a few places. It existed in Egypt as early as the 4th century B.C. (linen wrappings from mummies show the fabric was treated with wax and scratched with a sharp tool). Although a few African countries practiced the method in the 6th and 7th centuries A.D., Sri Lanka or perhaps India may have brought the technique to Indonesia during this same time period, although some may argue it was already a native tradition in certain regions. Various sources also credit China with applying the textile technique from 618 to 907 A.D., as well as Japan around the same time period.
How to Do It
Traditional batiking involves applying hot wax to a cloth with the wax being placed where the lightest colors of the cloth are to be kept as they are. The cloth is then dipped in a bucket of dye diluted with water and once the saturation of the desired color is achieved, the cloth is removed from the dye bucket. It is allowed to dry, and wax is subsequently applied where desired over the new color. After dying and waxing achieves the desired pattern of color, the dry cloth is covered completely in wax and then crumbled into a ball which creates cracks in the wax. It is then dipped into a final dark color (usually darker than most of the colors previously used) and allowed to dry one final time before the wax is ironed off.
To iron the wax off, the cloth is placed between double sheets of paper, such as newsprint, and a household iron is moved back and forth over the paper until wax begins to bleed through the outermost layer of the paper. The heat from the iron pulls the wax out of the cloth onto the paper. Once the wax is seen coming through the paper layers, the iron is put aside, the current papers are removed from above and below the cloth, and a new set of papers are placed in the same places, above and below the cloth. This process is repeated until wax is no longer pulled from the cloth (about 4 to 6 total times). The batik is finished!
Certain patterns of batik arose in different cities of the same country where the method was used. Tools, such as the tjanting (canting), were invented around the 13th century for the batiking process in Java, Indonesia. The tjanting is like a wood pencil with a metal reservoir at the far end that holds the hot wax and has a small hole at its base to let the wax through.
My sister, Sarai Stricklin, is an Hawaiian batik artist in Maui, Hawai’i. She batiks silk, making scarves, dresses, and wall hangings among other items.
This modern silk batik “From Sea to Land” by Sarai Stricklin expresses the eternal continuity between sea and land.
Popularity of batik items (clothing, furnishing fabrics, wall hangings, etc.) has fluctuated over the centuries and even in the past few decades. Watercolor batik paintings are heralding the beginning of a resurgence of the technique here in the United States.
