Suminagashi

Suminagashi experiments - 2023

A big part of one of my projects 'Control the narrative' in my first semester of my third year at university I was exploring this project through creating naturally occurring patterns. In order to do so I researched into different techniques and landed on the art of suminagashi. An old marbling technique which originated in Japan with some samples originating all the way back to  825–880 c.e. Suminagashi is often translated as "floating ink" and is used for various crafts including not only paper but fabrics, metal, and ceramics. 

I experimented through various ways of achieving the patterns I wanted through searching rings that appear in trees as well as barks and taking inspiration from them to create ringlets that would resemble them.

Writing ink with oil, soap and water on cartridge paper

Writing ink and soap blown through straw on 200gsm paper 

Marbling ink and soap on watercolour 300gsm paper

To view all these prints please click the link below.

https://fliphtml5.com/yxvit/rdou/