Minoan Batik Scenes

This content doesn't really fall under the umbrella of "Greek mythology" per se, but it's close enough for the organization of this blog :)

I am currently working on, among other things, four fabric items that will emulate scenes of Minoan frescoes. My thumbnails right now include blue monkeys, dolphins in a Nilotic scene, an octopus, and a goddess with a griffin. With each scene, the depiction will be surrounded by borders made up with motifs that might correlate to what is being shown: waves with the dolphins, sand dollars with the octopus, flower bushes with the monkeys, and double-axes with the goddess and griffin.

Each of these muslin samples is approximately 30"x36", and I plan to display them hanging in the middle of a room so that viewers can see the imagery from either side. I hesitate to identify them as tapestries, since the coloring achieved in these will only be done through the technique of batik, rather than individually dyed spools of thread. For those that don't know, batik is a form of applying wax to fabric to act as a resist so that dye will not hold on the the fibers of the fabric. The wax is washed/melted off, then reapplied in other areas to be dyed again, in order to build up layers of color. For those who know of, or have made, pysanka, it's almost exactly the same procedure. In that same vein, if you have ever done these before then you know EXACTLY how much time I will be in the studio in the coming week or two...oof.