Batik artist Yaroslava Kuznetsova, known as the Master Amarga – a professional artist, member of the Moscow Union of Artists. Yaroslava has become engaged in batik quite recently. Although her experience in painting on fabric has a couple of decades, but they were painting scenery and costumes for the theater and cinema. Few specifics, other materials and for other purposes – the screen, and, especially, the scene, that is much more conventional, and “clothes” can not be used in everyday life. But she wanted to move all this beauty into life.

Yaroslava always loved things that are not only beautiful, but also functional. Batik happily combines both the first and second – painted fabric looks rich and festive, it can be worn as a scarf, beautifully draped, it will warm in the cold and protect from the sun and will last five or six years at least. Batik by Yaroslava Kuznetsova – author’s work. She does not copy other people’s work, all the pictures on batik – her own, and every thing in a single item, she does not use sketches and draws directly on the fabric.

Materials of her work – one hundred percent silk, active preserve dyes that leave silk the same soft and flowing, as it was before painting. Her batik painting is a four-step work, the artist first paints the background, then all is steamed, then she paints details, and again all is steamed.

It is difficult to say who, when and where figured pattern on the fabric was applied with the help of reserving substances, ie substances that prevent the penetration of ink into the fabric. The role of these substances at different times in different regions was performed based on compositions of beeswax, various resins, flour, white clay, rice paste. The first records of the dyeing process using reserves we find in stories by Pliny the Elder, who described this technique: “In Egypt, clothes are dyed in a surprising way: after a white cloth with an invisible drawing on it, impregnated with no paint, … plunging it into a hot paint, in due course, it’s taken out colored.” But even before this method was known in Peru, Sumeria, Africa. As a rule, this was two-colored fabric, where the pattern had the color of undyed fabric, and the background was colored.

Batik artist Yaroslava Kuznetsova

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