Suminagashi

Whilst scrolling, I came across suminagashi – a form of marbling using floating inks. I was drawn to how the effects are reminiscent of contour lines. I was transfixed watching the process, and decided to have a go.

I got hold of some sumi ink and began. Well, it was an unmitigated disaster. The ink wouldn’t float, so I tried thinning it, changing from hard to softened water, even trying distilled. Then when it did float, when I removed the paper from the surface the ink ran everywhere. I tried different papers – watercolour, Ho-sho etc. The most successful turned out to be printer paper. After all that, I decided that perhaps it’s not for me; maybe the results aren’t that great either.

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