On October 7th and 8th, our NORBAG member from Portland, Jackie Wygant, gave a Suminagashi workshop. We had 11 members on Friday and 12 on
Saturday. Suminagashi or "floating ink" is
the process of marbling plain paper with water and ink to transform it into
something vibrant and colorful.
We started with simple rings being deposited
with big round brushes. We progressed to multiple rings, blowing on rings to create
distortion and finally overprints (on maps and previously marbled
papers). We took a lot of paper home with us.
If you would like to try this ancient
art form, you can get started with a couple large brushes, a cookie sheet with sides and Bo-Ku Undo dye set of six colors available at both Dick
Blick and Amazon ($13-18).
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| All of the tables were gathered around Jackie's workstation on the left. We had varying sizes of trays for the inks |
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| Jackie loading her brushes |
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| Closeup of making rings. The light parts between the grey circles actually have color. |
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| Making multiple rings with four different colors |
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| Manipulating the rings by blowing with a straw |
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| Manipulating the rings by blowing gently from the side |
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| Jackie gently lays the paper down starting from one corner |
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| Here is the result from Jackie's technique of blowing from above |
And now our samples
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| These two are overprints. On the left, it is on a map and on the right is an overprint on another marbling page. |
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