The Art of Bali Batik

Bali Batik has its origin from the island of Java where many batik artist live and have galleries. Especially in the cultural capital of Java, Yogjakarta you can find many workshops and batik galleries.

Batik was invented in China, India and Japan and was brought to Indonesia in the last millennium at the time of the Chinese Tang Dynasty.

Batik makers love to portray patterns of animals such as elephants, snakes, buffalos, lizards and other mythological creatures. Popular on Bali are the Hindu epics about Rama and Sita.

The beautiful hand-made pieces of art are made by applying patterns of different colors to cotton by dyeing in several stages and by applying wax after each stage to protect areas of unwanted color.

The wax can be applied by hand (called tulis) or with a metal stamp (called cap). Batik actually means 'to dot'. With batik tulis, the batik maker uses hot wax in a small instrument called 'canting' made of bamboo and copper. This instrument has one, two or even three nozzles with different dimensions to create a wax pattern and it works just like a pencil.

After the wax pattern is made the cloth is put into a bath of color and all those parts of the cloth which do not have wax applied to it suck up the color. Then the wax is removed from another part of the cloth and applied to the just colored parts. After this stage it's time to color the cloth with another color and another from the lightest color to black.

This process of applying, coloring and removing of wax is very intensive and is repeated until the right taints of color appear on the cloth.

 

Batik in abundance

 

When batik has been made with the batik tulis method the colors on the cloth are as bright as on the other side of the cloth because the wax is applied to both sides. When batik has been made with the batik cap method the colors are faint in the center because the wax here is only applied to one side.

There are some Bali batik makers who use a combination of the batik tulus and the batik cap method. The most used method is the cap method where the same patterns are repeated on the entire piece of cloth.

If you're interested to learn the art of batik in a couple of days then Ubud is the ideal place to go to. Museum Puri Lukisan (+62 361-971159/975136) on Jalan Raya organizes a batik course for 1-2 days and here you familiarize yourself with the age old technique and make your own batik painting.

You can also join one of Ubud's famous artists, I Nyoman Suradnya's Bali batik courses on Jalan Gautama 10 (+62 361-975415), which ranges from 1-5 days where he loves to teach you the art of batik from a very basic level to a more advanced level.