Painting On Clothes

The art of "batiking" is similar to the one of drawing or painting on a piece of cloth.
The main tool, the canting ('tjanting'), is used in staed of a pencil or brush, and liquid wax (see paragraph here below)in stead of paint.
Finely detailed designs are first drawn freehand with a pencil on the textile. Then hot liquid wax is applied. Here above, a Javanese woman applying wax in the intricately involved patterns with a canting (tjanting), a small copper container with a long slender spout. From time to time she blows on the tip of the canting to secure an easy flow of the wax. Areas not slated for coloring are filed with the wax. The cloth is then passed through a vat of dye. The wax is removed with hot water, scraped from the portions of the dried material still to be dyed. The parts that were covered by the wax did not absorb the dye and thus remain white (or whatever color the original cloth was previously dyied). Since the wax behave as a resisting medium, this process is called resist-dye process. Next, other areas are waxed over. this is repeated during each phase of the coloring process, up to four or more times, until the overall pattern and effect are achieved.