Nihonga Day 6

Today:

We learned how to make rice glue

(which looked a lot like tapioca).

Jess made a batch of oyster shell white on her own

and Laura worked hard on experiment pieces.

It’s a brand new week, which means brand new experiments!  I set up a new batch of 5 4×4″ pieces to work on.

For the first layer on each, I used mica mixed with gofun (the “glue” of Nihonga), and some oyster shell white.

and after it dried, I began adding blue (azurite).

My favorite one so far is this one.

While that was drying, I returned to my wood panel from last week and worked a lot on the right side of the piece.

I used different kinds of pigment (mica and oyster shell white, as well as pastel and titatium white dried).

I like what’s happening so far.

The trick is to keep it simple, so I decided to leave it at that for the day.  It will be good to look at them again with fresh eyes tomorrow morning.