Tag Archives: japan

What’s next?

Peppers in the grocery store

Peppers in the grocery store

I had to include the picture of the peppers because they make me smile, even though I had already posted it on Instagram. Aren’t they beautiful? I was tempted to bring some home just to look at, not being overly fond of peppers, but they were $5.00/pound. And I’d want a bunch to look good, so…

I took a workshop at the Kimbell Art Museum last week related to Japanese printing, although I’m not sure the actual printing actually had anything to do with Japan. We did go into the Asian room and look at all the beautiful screens and looked at slides of others, but they were painted, not printed. Then we had a wooden block and objects to glue onto it to make our printing block. There was a long piece of cotton taped and pinned to the table, so that once we had our blocks ready, we used a brayer to spread paint onto plexiglass. Once the brayer was filled, we rolled it onto the blocks and printed.

Printing block

Printing block

I wanted a random pattern because there’s no way I could get everything to line up, which would frustrate me no end, as that perfection demon sits on my shoulder. Notice how some of the block prints off the “real” fabric. Also notice that the printing looks black, although you can see from the block above that it’s really a dark red. Oh, well. Wonder if it will change if it’s washed.

Cloth pinned on table

Cloth pinned on table

Below is just the fabric. I see there are a few empty spots.

Cloth printed

Cloth printed

Maybe I should have done something like this rug in a Target ad, or the other black and white ones designed by Nate Berkus. I really wish I could include a picture here, but don’t want to violate any laws.

My neighbor took much more care, not only to make her block, but in the printing she uses too close-together colors. Nice job!

My neighbor

My neighbor

Next weaving?

Next weaving?

It’s time to decide what to weave next. This is a part of a cartoon for a weaving. (Ever notice how when you take pictures of paper, it never looks white?) I made the lines right angles but can’s decide if it would be better if they were woven at a different angle. The right angle part was to just keep it simple. Thoughts? Advice?