Dancer Series Silk Paintings: Go Go

sketch of go go dancer

Oh my! It's rare that I get more than one full silk painting done in one day - it's a long and intricate process from start to finish, and unfortunately I only have one stretcher frame for each size silk that I work on. Hopefully that will change when I get a studio, but who knows when that will be!

I had a bit of a head start on today since I already had the Cancan dancer resist lines finished and only had to paint (the easiest part for me), but what really got me through was the energy that I'm feeling from these silks. I'm enjoying every part of working on this series, and I'm not running out of inspiration any time soon. My new batch of silks came in the mail and I was off and running.

Resist Lines for Go Go Dancer Silk

I didn't need to look up photos for the Go Go Dancer silk since I was initially inspired to start this series following my own experience dancing for a 70's disco themed benefit last weekend.  I used the costume I wore as the general starting point and went from there. The sketch turned out exactly the way I wanted it on the first try (a rare experience), and I immediately got to work on the resist lines.

I chose the checkerboard and disco ball themes to add in extra ties to the 70s, and left little resist circles along the checkerboard to make it seem as if they were spots from the disco ball.

The color scheme I went with was bright on bright. I used thin resist lines on the top part of the background with the intention of flooding the lines and letting the colors run together. I enhanced this effect by putting salt along the resist lines to draw the dye.

Go Go Dancer Silk - Finished

It's late now, and I'm exhausted, but happy. I love dancing, and I love bright colors, and this piece has a whole lot of both - that's the way I like it (uh huh, uh huh!)