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Paper hearts
Feb. 14th, 2021 05:48 pmDenise and I have a long-standing Valentine's tradition; not dinner out (not possible this year), not the heart-shaped chocolate cake (though that one happens more often than not). No, every year on Valentine's Day, we try to do an art project together.
In previous years, we've made paper. Rolled and pressed ceramic tiles. Made mono prints and woodcuts and even took glassblowing lessons.
This year, Denise taught me to make paste paper.
It's one of several decorative paper techniques she learned in her surface design class last winter, along with cyanotype, suminigashi and paper marbling. Cyanotype requires chemicals and sunshine, neither of which we had available, and both suminigashi and marbling require specialized inks and some sort of vat or tray to float your colors.
Paste paper, though, is easy. All you need is a starch-based paste (corn, wheat, rice, or, for the fancy, methyl cellulose), some acrylic colors, and a smooth surface to work on. Everything else can be improvised. There's a pretty good tutorial for the process here.
Denise had the paints and a jar of wheat paste that's been in the fridge since before lockdown, and I found a nice piece of plexiglas in the pottery shed. The rest was plastic spoons, popsicle sticks, yogurt cups, and a cake decorator's plastic scraper that I use to lay mastic when I mount tiles.
You start by mixing your paste with some acrylic paint--the cheaper and runnier, the better. Lay down a piece of drawing paper on the plexiglas and mist lightly with water, then blot up the excess.
Blop down four or more spoonfuls of paste on the paper, then spread with the scraper. Cover the entire sheet, over-running the edges. The plexiglas is easy to clean. You can use different colored pastes and blend them with the blade, or go for simple.
Now make a pattern. Denise is using the serrated edge of the decorator's blade, but you can use a brush, a plastic fork, your fingers. If you're not happy with the pattern, smooth it out and try again, adding a little more paste if necessary.
Pick up the edge of the paper with a knife or the edge of your blade and careful transfer it, holding from beneath, onto a blotter or drying rack. Here we're using all my cookie-cooling racks.
They'll curl up a little as they dry, but once completely dry you can press them flat under a weight, and if you're gluing them onto a book cover or card, that will help straighten them as well.
I found my favorite pieces were actually made with an old, flattened toothbrush, either with a sine wave pattern or the more jagged waves shown above. In both cases, I started at the top and overlapped the layers as I worked my way down.
We only stopped when we ran out of racks; they're stacked up with 2-inch kiln posts to allow air flow.
In previous years, we've made paper. Rolled and pressed ceramic tiles. Made mono prints and woodcuts and even took glassblowing lessons.
This year, Denise taught me to make paste paper.
It's one of several decorative paper techniques she learned in her surface design class last winter, along with cyanotype, suminigashi and paper marbling. Cyanotype requires chemicals and sunshine, neither of which we had available, and both suminigashi and marbling require specialized inks and some sort of vat or tray to float your colors.
Paste paper, though, is easy. All you need is a starch-based paste (corn, wheat, rice, or, for the fancy, methyl cellulose), some acrylic colors, and a smooth surface to work on. Everything else can be improvised. There's a pretty good tutorial for the process here.
Denise had the paints and a jar of wheat paste that's been in the fridge since before lockdown, and I found a nice piece of plexiglas in the pottery shed. The rest was plastic spoons, popsicle sticks, yogurt cups, and a cake decorator's plastic scraper that I use to lay mastic when I mount tiles.
You start by mixing your paste with some acrylic paint--the cheaper and runnier, the better. Lay down a piece of drawing paper on the plexiglas and mist lightly with water, then blot up the excess.
Blop down four or more spoonfuls of paste on the paper, then spread with the scraper. Cover the entire sheet, over-running the edges. The plexiglas is easy to clean. You can use different colored pastes and blend them with the blade, or go for simple.
Now make a pattern. Denise is using the serrated edge of the decorator's blade, but you can use a brush, a plastic fork, your fingers. If you're not happy with the pattern, smooth it out and try again, adding a little more paste if necessary.
Pick up the edge of the paper with a knife or the edge of your blade and careful transfer it, holding from beneath, onto a blotter or drying rack. Here we're using all my cookie-cooling racks.
They'll curl up a little as they dry, but once completely dry you can press them flat under a weight, and if you're gluing them onto a book cover or card, that will help straighten them as well.
I found my favorite pieces were actually made with an old, flattened toothbrush, either with a sine wave pattern or the more jagged waves shown above. In both cases, I started at the top and overlapped the layers as I worked my way down.
We only stopped when we ran out of racks; they're stacked up with 2-inch kiln posts to allow air flow.