Batik Painting

In July this year, I was put in charge of running a stall organised by my school vendor. It was a Batik event. It was my first time doing quite a fair bit to get the stall up and running.

Creating A Batik Painting
By the way, Batik is a form of Art that originates from Indonesia. Basically, you have to get ready a pot of wax, a tool (known as 'janting' (my spelling is not so accurate here, sounds something like this))to help to apply the wax on the pictures drawn, a piece of white cotton cloth or silk cloth, a frame and Batik paints to start your work. Just to give readers a better idea, this is roughly how it works.

• Staple the cotton cloth onto a wooden frame. This is to 'stretch' the cloth and make it easy to apply wax and colours. This will also ensure that the cloth will not stick to the table after waxing and when colouring, the batik paints will not stain onto the table.
• Next, boil a pot of wax, dip the janting into the wax. This tool actually collects a little bit of the liquid wax and when you hold and press it on the cloth, the wax will flow out. Trace the picture on the cloth with the wax by using the janting.
• Do note taht the wax is hot and be careful not to scald your hands/fingers. So kids must be guided by an adult and not leave them alone to complete the job.
• Then wet a small portion of the picture by using a brush. Dip your brush into the paints, and colour on the wet portion. The colour will run and spread very fast and beautifully. You can get different shades too.
• Dry the cloth under the sun.Be careful not to let your cloth get wet as the colours can 'run'. If you want it to be permanent, you need to buy a fixer to apply on the cloth.

Back to the Batik event, we have parent volunteers who sewed up the Batik pieces done by pupils into cushions, bags etc. Then these products were sold to the public and funds raised were donated to an old folks home. On the last day of the sale, I actually took my whole family to support the event. Snow White was actually very attracted to a stall that allowed anybody to have a try on Batik by painting on the cloth. Of course, no waxing. Many kids tried and I could see many happy faces.


Snow White selected a picture on Orhids. She painted on the spot under the guidance of an adult who ran the stall. As the place was a shopping mall, her piece of Art work was dried using a hair dryer.

                                         This is Snow White's completed Art Work. (Sorry, did not rotate properly for your view. ) The colours can be much more attractive than this. I left it to Snow White to apply any colours that she wanted. (You do not need alot of paint for this picture, the Batik paints are very watery, a big bottle of paint can go a long way.)

                                         A closer look. The white lines are traced using the wax. 

After drying, you can actually feel the thick outlines of the wax and if you do not remove the wax, it will crack and drop out bit by bit. So place your cloth below a thin stack of newspapers.Then iron on it, you can see the wax melt and stain on the newspaper like below:

                                          Can you see the melted wax on the newspaper?