Here they are: the tools. You never know exactly what kind of line you want to make, so I like to have a lot of choices. Plus seeing all the batiking tools sitting together makes me think of an art class, with lots of hands reaching to create something of their own with these tools. The batiking pen is called a tjanting tool; sometimes the tops are copper, sometimes bronze. Either way the well stays hot, so you can let the wax flow freely onto the fabric. The wax will be hot so it will penetrate the fabric and the pen will never touch the cloth (in a perfect world). In reality, I can hear the little drags as the metal contacts the fabric and these sounds are little reminders, lift up, lighten up, relax. I feel the energy so lightly captured on the tip of these tjanting pens, like the humming of the hummingbird and the ease of the line he creates in the sky.
The Tools, the Wax and the Waxing
The wax. I use a little crock pot from the 70s with a brick to lean my tjanting tools against. You have to use a thermometer! The wax must never get above 250 degrees F; it is very dangerous. Wax flashes at high temperatures, which means it explodes instead of vaporizing, when it is too hot there will be little tiny fireballs of hot wax. Not good. The ideal temperature is about 225 degrees F. The wax is 15% beeswax and 85% paraffin wax. Sometimes I mix my own, sometimes I don't. The width of your line is controlled by the size of the tjanting tool and the temperature of the wax: hotter wax makes for thinner lines, so you move super quickly. I prefer to keep it at the ideal temperature and vary the thickness of the lines with faster moves or fatter tjanting tools.
Then, when the waxing begins, I can't stop.
If I had patterns prepped with stretched fabric for miles, I would draw and draw and draw with the wax. I usually exhaust my readily available supplies, before I ever exhaust the desire to draw another one. These wax lines are the drawing, and the freedom and joy in each of the lines is infinite to me.
