Suminagashi Class (Japanese Paper Marbling)

Recently Himself and I had the opportunity to take a 'suminagashi' (literally floating ink) class.  It is a Japanese art where you can marble paper or fabric using 'sumi' ink.  Traditional uses only black ink.

Starting with black sumi ink.

The ink spreading on the water surface.  

One carefully puts a drop of ink on top of a floating piece of rice paper.  This help to control the ink so it remains on the water surface.  The two dark spots are where the water tension broke.  The ink sank to the bottom.

I REALLY wish I had stopped here and printed.

But I continued on with the layering of inks; the second layer using yellow this time.

I added several more colors (red, blue, & orange) until I like the pattern and color blend.  

The next step is to drop your paper face down on top of the water.  The color you see on the paper is what is bleeding thru onto the back.

Here are a couple of other patterns.

Once you pull the paper off the water & ink, you place it on a piece of Plexiglas and give it a good rinse.  This removes the excess dye.

My papers.

I would do a primary pull of the fresh inks... then would do additional pulls from the original inks.  That gave a more muted color, which I liked more than the really bright primary pulls.

Himself did only primary print pulls so his papers were really bright.

OK, it is really hard to visualize this so we did a quick video to show the process.