Using Rice Paper
Lately I have been working with a fair amount of rice paper applications to my paintings. At first I was just crumbling it up, wetting it and letting it dry like that. Then I would spread it out and using acrylic medium apply it to the painted canvas (you can see examples of this in earlier posting on this blog or on my web site in the Contemplation Series). But my work has progressed from there…I am now using any left over paint to paint the rice paper or even to just clean off brushes. Below is a photo which shows a stack of various weights of painted paper. Some is thin like tissue and other is thick. Some I purchased in sheets and other in a roll. You might be able to see some of my paintings in a few of these…
Sometimes, I don’t use the rice paper for cleaning brushes, but will use it to take prints from a wet canvas. Like I have said before, I will apply the paint thickly to a canvas, then press a series of rice papers over the wet paint and lift it off…sometimes doing it more than one time. I love the different textures and looks you can get depending on how the paper is removed.
The example below shows a couple of “liftings” from a canvas. You can see the lines of the overlap. One thing which was interesting about this was I applied the paint thickly onto the canvas directly from the tubes or tubs. When I first took a lift, there was no white visible. With a couple of other lifts, the white magically appeared. It was so much fun to see this happen.
Other times I do not do it this way. Below you will see some thin “tissue” rice paper. This was hanging up (see the clothes pins – pegs – in the photo). I liked the way the blues and paynes gray worked on this particular paper. When I had a thin brush in the cream paint, I hit it with a few gestural marks. I do not know any Asian language, so if this says something, it is completely coincidental (if you know it says something, please let me know).
I have this one in the back of my head to use in some way. I am just not sure yet how it will play out.
So how about you? Do you have a stack of “papers” (maybe not in paper form, either…I also have a collection of dry acrylic paint blobs) which influence your work? And is happenstance appealing to you?
I look forward to hearing from you.
