Tag: handmade paper

The Four Treasures: Paper, i

Throughout the world, since ancient times, record keeping and writing have been important for whatever reasons.  Finding a surface for the writing was essential, and that surface needed to be smooth and permanent.  In the Middle East, clay tablets were used to preserve records.  Egyptians developed papyrus.  The West and the East developed similar paper-making processes.  In both methods, various types of fibers, or pulp, were suspended in water and possibly other chemicals or ingredients.  The pulp, suspended in water, is then placed onto a screen.  The screen is shaken, the pulp spreads across the screen, the screen is lifted, and the water drains out.  The pulp is left behind, and a piece of paper is created.

Traditionally-made Asian papers differ from western papers, even though the manufacturing process is similar.  The difference is the types of plants used to create the paper.  In the west, cotton paper was the most common until the invention of large-scale wood pulp paper in the 1800s.  Handmade paper in the west is still usually based on cotton lint, although other materials can be added to it.  In Japan, the handmade paper tradition continues, although costs rise as materials and paper makers become more scarce.

The following video shows traditional Japanese paper – washi – being made after all the labor-intensive prep work has been done.

Line & Color, i

Today, I am just writing off the top of my head.

I have been working on a handmade paper, experimenting with it as far as color, line, and ability to withstand wetness in the form of washes and in the form of repeated layers of color.

So . . . the next picture was a free-hand outlining of chrysanthemums, trying to create lined areas with logical beginnings and ends, and then painted with the saiboku. I think the results are much better. Remember the coloring books of your childhood? Staying inside the lines was “good” – and actually, with “meticulous” painting, staying in the lines is “good” too!  And, it was fairly easy to do. I filled the lines in with mixtures of colors, in one layer, except for a couple of small areas where you will see areas of orange in the green of the leaves. I recalled, last minute, something I read about applying multiple thin layers of colors, to gain a translucency not possible with a single layer of paint. Thus, I dabbed in a bit of orange, while the paper and paint had not yet dried. I like the results.

And this leads to today’s doings, which I hope to photograph along the way. It may be done today, but as the day is dampish, and other things are going, it may be a project of some duration.

To begin, I return to the chrysanthemums. Ink ground, I did the outlines, some with darker ink, some with lighter ink. What I plan to do is to do thin layers of paint, and then photograph the picture before beginning the next layer of painting. Never having done this before, I will be looking to some texts, such as Fritz van Briessen’s The Way of the Brush: Painting Techniques of China and Japan. Others will be mentioned as used.