Artist tries for world's longest batik painting

Artist tries for world's longest batik painting

Sleeping two hours a day for the past five days, a 62-year-old
Singapore artist hopes to enter the record books with the world's
longest batik painting.

A visibly tired Sarkasi Said had finished the 100 metre by 0.7
metre Indonesian-style painting of orchids on Tuesday morning and
planned to submit the entry to the Guinness Book of World
Records, a spokeswoman for Sarkasi said.

His painting of purple and yellowish flowers and shooting
green stems was inspired by Singapore's Botanic Gardens, using a
modern adaptation of Indonesia's centuries-old traditional batik
textile art of dyes and wax.

Known in Singapore as the "baron of batik", the Muslim artist
has won several local awards for his batik art, usually drawn
with dyes and a container of wax on washed and boiled silk.

"He was very, very tired and his back aches but his mission
has been accomplished," said Zarina Ika, the painter's daughter-
in-law. -- Reuters