Chinese New Year 2018

Wishing all our friends, volunteers and members a Happy and Prosperous Chinese New Year 2018. May the new year bring you joy, good luck and great health.

Please be informed that our office will be closed from Thursday 15 February to 17 February 2018 for the festival.

Painting T-shirts and Bags 27 Jan 2018

More members turned up for a painting session at our Outreach premises on Saturday. Two types of painting technique were tried out by the members.

A small cotton twill bag was painted with a blue lotus, using Western watercolour techniques and our usual T-shirt dyes. The lotus was quickly and lightly sketched on with a 2B pencil before the colours were added and then blended with water. The blue, rather than the usual red or pink lotus, was chosen as the bag was painted at the request of a non-member. The picture shows the first stages of the painting on the bag, before the colours were blended.

Two other members tried their hand at the Chinese one-stroke freehand brush technique to paint simple plum blossoms for the coming festival. The ladies practised on bits of newspaper and scrap cloth first before starting on their T-shirts.It's important for beginners to learn to loosen their arms and shoulders first by working of disposable media so that there is less tension when they commit the dye to cloth. 

When we teach children, the emphasis is always on the fact that there is no such thing as a wrong stroke or a mistake. We always try to encourage children to see their strokes as opportunities to interprete creatively so that there is no pressure for them to "draw" or "colour correctly". 

When painting directly on to T-shirts with indelible dyes, it's important that the student feels confident to paint confidently so that he or she can work freely. Some people call this freehand technique the spirit or "chi" of the brush and an experienced painter can tell how loose and relaxed the painter was with just one glance at how the picture was formed.