Experiment: Shattered Silk Into Pigment

So I have this big ass pile of shattered silk from a Taisho Era furisode laying around, staring at me in the night. Waiting for me to make a goddamn decision about what to do with it. It feels my anxiety. It feeds on my indecisive warbling, my desire to keep it just because it’s such a beautiful color. But it’s literally turning into dust and staining the shit out of everything it comes in contact with.

Hold up. Dust? Stain? Beautiful color? Can I grind this shit up and snort it to absorb its powers into a pigment?!

Well, buckle up, chucklefucks. I’ve officially lost my goddamn mind, so we’re going to find out! Together!

FRIEENDSHIIP.

Anyway. So this is a real thing that I’m doing with my human limbs, because I definitely don’t have anything better I could possibly doing with my time. And because I’ve committed to this, I’m going to waste a whole blog post on it, because It’s good to be the king.

Here’s a picture I took mid-process because I definitely didn’t forget to until right this second. Who does that?

So what I’m doing here is grinding the shattered silk lining from a Taisho Era kimono in a mortar and pestle with powdered gum Arabic. I’d like to take this moment to point out that I’m a wacko and not a fucking idiot, and that this mortar and pestle has never and will never be used for food related preparations. If you lose your own goddamn mind and decide you want to try this, I recommend not using your favorite spice grinder.

This is not a good way to jazz up any meal. Do not eat this.

Shattering silk literally does turn into dust, by the way. Roll it between your fingers a bit, and you’ll see it start to go. Take a look:

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There is the same piece of silk after rolling it between my thumb and finger for about thirteen seconds. I don’t know, I didn’t actually count. It wasn’t very long.

Since a finger can do that, this is what a few minutes in the mortar and pestle does:

So basically I just kept doing it until it looked like I could sell it to a vampire coke fiend or something. Behold!

If it’s not already painfully obvious, I’ve never done a fucking drug in my life. I am literally always stone cold sober. I have no excuses for this shit.

Here’s an interesting thing I had to do that I didn’t take a picture of! Every now and then I had to pick through it and remove a hair that wasn’t mine. It was a garment that was worn by a human, after all.

Once I was able to remove any of the impurities out of it, it was ready to sample. So I grabbed a pair of little ceramic dishes, put water in one and silk dust in the other.

Alright! Let’s get that red shit wet.

I was surprised by how intense the color is right off the bat. Like…dude. Look at this shit. If I just showed you this picture and told you it was ink, would you believe it?

Let’s lay it on paper and see how it does.

That is an intense goddamn red right there. Can it go a bit more transparent?

Yes, it can.

So how is it as a pigment?

It lifts well. It behaves like a watercolor, and it dries a bit darker than it lays down wet. It can be reactivated after drying. Adding a bit more gum Arabic solved the grainy problem for the most part.

So guess what? I just made a red watercolor out of shattering silk lining. I don’t know if anyone has ever done that before, but now I have. And I like the red. It’s a screaming blood red, and it actually mixes well and consistently with other pigments.

Guess I’ll grind up the rest of that shit. In the mean time, here’s a lame-ass Instagram style floppy rose I painted in like 30 seconds.

The pigment is nice. This paper kind of sucks for this, though.

Okay, we’re done here.

BYE.