The Art of Suminagashi Japanese Marbling | Craft Therapy | Apartment Therapy

[Music] hi my name is Lynn meet Ron I'm an artist and today I'm going to show you the art of Samina Joshi which translates into floating ink in Japanese and we'll be using Sumi brushes that are also used for calligraphy with Sumi ink and over here we'll also have tools that we'll be using to manipulate the ink on the surface of the water and over here we have surfactant which is Kodak photo flow and surfactant lowers the surface tension of water to allow the inks to flow on the surface and today I'll be showing you seven different techniques that you can do first step is to pour water into the bat I like to pour about a nails or of the water in there about a quarter of an inch to an half an inch I'm gonna let the water settle a little bit and then take a strip of paper either newspaper or construction paper works and what we're gonna do first is skim the bat to make sure there's no dust particles hanging on the surface [Music] now we're ready to start you want to hold the brush in our hand and not have any ink dripping from it and in the left hand I'm going to use a Sumi brush which is soap and water and just like with dishes it's gonna cut through the grease or the ink and create that negative space we're gonna hold the brushes vertical and we're just gonna dip just the very tip of the brush onto the surface of the water we're not really going to dip underneath it so I'm going to touch the surface and initially you'll see just a circle and then we'll alternate brushes and create concentric circles [Music] when you feel like you have enough ink in your bat you can put your brushes down and then we can start with different techniques to move the ink around so the first technique is blowing so you can you just use your breath to very lightly blow on the surface of the water to create jagged lines or use a fan the second technique is to use its straw for more directional blowing I like to go from corner to corner to move ink around that the third technique is to use some sort of stylus I like to use a tee pin and you can use a stylus to drag it through the ink and with pins the ink will just spiral off of it or you can use something with a lot finer of an end I use my cat's whiskers that I find lying around they're really nice because they're thick at one end and really fine at the other and with this the ink won't spiral off of it but it will create more fine lines the fifth technique is I use a tooth brush and this is actually from western marbling where they use a whisk to get the ink on the surface of the fats and what I'll do is I'm going to dip it in my soap water solution and then with my finger on the brush we're just gonna flick it onto the surface to kind of create these little bubbles in the design the last chair techniques are different additives that I like to add to my inks so the first one is linseed oil or you can really use any type of oil and the last technique I'll show you today is using isopropyl alcohol which you can add to your inks or you can just use on its own so for this technique it's helpful to have a solid bubble of color and as a solvent isopropyl alcohol does a really interesting chemical reaction where it's pushing the ink away and at this point you can take a print and today we're going to print on both paper and silk for the first print we're going to print on Japanese paper [Music] [Music] so taking a print is a little bit like taking a picture you want to sit back and observe watch the colors kind of blend into each other and move around and then once you're ready to capture a moment you pick up your piece of paper hold it on either side both ends and then bow it slightly in the middle and then let it touch the surface of the water and drop it down the sides down slowly you may get a few air bubbles and your piece then once the color has adhered you can pick up a paper from the bat and here's your print for the second print we're going to be printing on silk once you feel like you're ready to print pick up your piece of silk and it helps if you have a friend nearby to help you and we're going to Bo the center in and touch the surface of the water and then gently and slowly release pins and then once it's absorbed all the ink you have your print Sumi nagashi is great because there's not that many materials involved in it everything is available online it's something easy that you can do as a family at home from ages 5 to 80 a lot of people enjoy doing it and it's so immediately gratifying to make a print I have a fashion background and I've just tried every type of surface design where there's screen printing block printing silk painting marbling was just another thing that I tried and something about the experience of semi nagashi the fact that it was very simplistic just inks on water just freed me up immediately and I do it as a form of meditation all the time where I don't even print on anything I just sit there with the vet and just focus on what's right there in front of me [Music] thanks so much for crafting with us today I hope you learned a lot about semi nagashi and continue doing it at home [Music]

Channel: Apartment Therapy

Views: 1,355,721

Keywords: Apartment Therapy, Apartments, How To, Interior Design, Home Decor, craft in focus festival, suminagashi, japanese marbling, marble prints, DIY marbling, DIY marbled prints, silk printing, DIY textile printing, textile arts center, new york city workshops, textile workshops, crafting workshops, craft workshops NYC, mesmerizing art, NYC artists

Id: qwaLFLbqJQg

Length: 7min 46sec (466 seconds)

Published: Sat May 04 2019