Such An Honour ...
- arlomercia
- May 28
- 2 min read
All the ink sticks I use are from Kobaien Inks in Nara, Japan. They are exquisite hand made inks in many shades of black. Also, I often use their unique range of Saibiboku colours which are perfect for capturing the gentle hues of nature. If you use their products in an artwork they will post it to their website, and when I started out I did that with a few of my early pictures - see here.
In February this year I sent them this painting 'Blackbird with White Iris'.
It is done on their 'Rare Earth Paper' - made to a recipe from the Edo period. It contains a small amount of earth/clay mixed in with the bark fibres and this absorbency makes it challenging to paint on because it crinkles. I overcame this by dry mounting it onto card first. When framed the paper has an intriguing glow.
Keitaro, the promotions manager, said "I can't believe you can paint such a beautiful scene on that earth paper!"
I was very touched.
Then much to my surprise, the next day ...
I received an email from him saying they were about to stock handmade Echizen paper from the famous Heizaburo Iwano Paper Studio. They were doing to do their own colour swatches, but instead would I do them? In return I would get some of the paper.
To be honest I was both stunned and overwhelmed! I had only been painting in this style for two years - didn't they have any local artists they could ask???
And his reply was:
"We are certainly supported by many customers, but there are not many people who have a wonderful inner nature and can express it richly as art.
What we think when we look at your paintings is that, although they are drawn with great care, the shapes and colors that appear at first glance fill and expand the viewer's imagination . This is truly one of the essences of traditional Japanese painting."
Well, it took a while to let that sink in! 😊
They sent me four papers - sized and unsized versions of Kumohada and Shiromashi paper - all very different from each other and all wonderful to use.
I decided to paint birds found in Japan to honour the artisans who made the paper, and I chose a bird and style which complimented each paper, and wrote reviews about the characteristics of each paper.
It is a great honour to have my work featured on their website.
You can see the results of my efforts at the following links (scroll down to the comments section):
Comments