Learn How to Batik

    Batik is a traditional cloth from Yogyakarta, Indonesia. I always admire batik since I first saw it. The texture and colors are just amazing. It really is a piece of art. A few weeks ago, I went to my friend’s cousin house to learn how to make one.

When I first reached my friend’s cousin house and meet the professional, the pros explained what is batik and how to make a good batik. He said, to make a great batik, we need a good ideas, passion and patience. Then, I was given a piece of handkerchief-sized cloth and I was asked to draw a motive or pictures on the cloth by using pencil. Then, I covered the area that I wanted to keep white colored when it finished with hot wax. It was pretty hard, because once the wax dropped on the cloth, it can’t be taken out unless you want to boil it to remove the wax and do all over again from the beginning. We should be very careful while doing the batik. At first, I didn’t think it would be this difficult to make batik. Since it was my first time to make batik, I took about two hours for only sketching and covering the batik.

After finished with the covering step, I moved onto the coloring step. The pros colored the batik by using so many colors and he said he took about a week to complete a big sized of cloth. Since it needs a lot of things to do and took so much time to paint one by one, he said I just could boil the cloth with one-colored-paint and dry. So I colored my batik with orange and wait until it’s completely dry.

I gained so much knowledge about batik and know more about Indonesian culture. It was really amazing to watch the pros paint and see their creation. If I had another chance to make one, I’d be very careful while covering the line with the wax and would like to try to make a different motive and a colorful batik. I was really satisfied with the result and I was having a really great time with my friends. It was a wonderful experience.

Date: 08/09/12, 15/09/12

Time Spent: 4 hours

Category: Creativity

Learning Outcome #2: Undertaken new challenges
Learning Outcome #8: Developed new skills