paper madness

There's been a bit of madness going on here today. I got so excited about it being my first studio day in my new work routine for 08 that I gave my self a headache by about 11am and had to go and have a cuppa with friend to calm down! Funny huh? I'll have to do things in a more measured, sensible fashion or I'll never last the day out :)

The other madness I have to share is a big beautiful book about chiyogami I treated myself to buying just before I left Japan (in 2005). The photo above is of the cover and the ones below are some inside shots. Basically every page (and this is a big book!) has a different chiyogami pattern on it and then some tiny little story in Japanese about the pattern's origin and symbolism and then some cute little manga type figures. I LOVE this book.

hot days and pots of tea

Our last visitor until later this month left today and I now have a little time to work. It's been great to play but I've drunk so much wine, champagne, many margaritas and pots and pots of Japanese tea over conversation in the last couple of weeks that it feels very much like time to go quiet and solo for a while. The next few days will be super hot again (41+ degrees or 106 F!!!) so I'm looking forward to being at home and trying to stay cool indoors. I still haven't taken photos of the new studio space. This might be possible now that we don't have a guest sleeping in it :) The little piece above is following on with my chiyogami design theme. I'm fiddling with some of these designs to help me plan out some new woodblock prints. The tea theme seems never ending. Maybe it says something about what I've been preoccupied with lately.

tea, tea and more tea

I've been making lots of small mixed media pieces lately. This one is chiyogami paper with ink and a little digital colouring. I'm a late bloomer to the wonders of photoshop and so haven't been able to stop fiddling with some of my drawings and prints since I got cs3 earlier this week. I'm driving my graphic designer friend J a bit crazy with all my basic questions (sorry J!). I'm playing around with colours on my designs this way so I can get a better sense of how a woodblock print might look before I start the labour-intensive process of carving the block.

the evolution of a little box

I've been developing a little chiyogami paper box for the past week or so. It started off looking like this in its first incarnation:

Bright red covered chiyogami paper on the bottom and then textured, white Japanese paper on the top. Then my little monk woodblock print on top of that. I lightly lacquered the whole thing to protect the paper from wear and tear. But I didn't like the paleness of the lid so I started playing with it again and put some more chiyogami paper on it to lift the monk print out a bit.
I love the colours in the chiyogami I used for the new lid. And now it looks like this:

and this:I'm much happier with it now. I've also bought some plain coloured paper to experiment with more lids to work in combination with some other amazing chiyogami patterned paper I have from Japan. I bought a huge stash just before I left and then rolled it up and tucked it inside one of my large rolls of printmaking paper. And just the other day I re-discovered it again accidentally while rummaging through my paper collection. I had completely forgotten about it!