Block Printed Dragons

I hadn't block printed since high school, so I was a little nervous about this one- but it's pretty simple, and the tools don't take up as much space as, say, screenprinting... This was fun! I used screenprinting ink, because neither I or the art-supply-store clerk knew if block printing ink would wash out, but screen printing ink will stay fast. I initially printed the pink one with a pink spot in the middle of the eye, but I ended up not liking how that looked, so I put a bundle of French knots over it. I also backstitched the upper edge of the purple dragon's wings. I've still got one more color of ink, and one more "plate" that I can carve up, so I'll probably add a couple more to this group of dragons!

Paperbag Princess Dragon

On this one, I knew I couldn't get the watercolor look of the original through embroidery (or maybe I could, but I actually want to finish this project someday). I wasn't sure what I had that would get that watercolor look, and stay on the fabric through washing, so I grabbed all of my old markmaking tools from art school, and made a couple different backgrounds on a length of the extra white muslin. I was so sure the Easter egg dye was going to work- but it only made flat areas of color, and washed out completely when I washed it. My friend that helped me was so sure the colored pencil was going to wash out- but that ended up staying. Permanent markers worked as expected- they were permanent, and though the egg dye washed away, the blurring of the markers from the egg dye stayed. The winner was some fancy watercolors- the kind that come in little tubes and are not made by crayola. They looked pretty and right when I laid them down, and were mostly colorfast through the wash and dry I put them through. There was a little dulling and blurring, but little enough that I chose to go with that one.

My friend's grandma called with a trick for laying crayon colors down onto fabric the day after I did all of my experimenting. It was almost like she knew what I was working on, all the way from Texas! I don't actually have any crayons, but I might have to get some.

Mercer Mayer Dragon

I really didn't want to draw a dragon, so I pulled out every book from my bookshelves that I thought might relate to dragons somehow, with the idea of looking through them for inspiration (see: "procrastination"). One of the books was Mercer Mayer's "Little Critter's The Fussy Princess"- a story Little Critter tells his fussy little sister to make her fall asleep at bedtime. It has a dragon. I ultimately decided to hell with drawing my own dragon, this illustration was super cute, and would take a couple weeks of Sunday mornings to embroider, so I traced and went for it.