Better With Art

Simple Suminagashi & the Art of Letting Go

This week’s project is another invitation to let go of perfection, to breathe, and loosen your grip a little.

We’re going to explore a simple technique that echoes the ancient Japanese art of suminagashi, which is literally floating ink. But instead of ink and water, we will use shaving cream and two colors (as long as they’re noy complementary) of food coloring, ordinary items you may already have at home, to create something fascinating.

For this week’s project, I have cardstock and a container slightly larger, shaving cream, food coloring in the only two colors I had, a plastic card, and plastic report cover in lieu of a cookie sheet as I did not want to use items I would want to use food with again.

Another item I am using is a plastic palette knife. When I’ve done this project with kids at the library where I work, we’ve used plastic knives. A palette knife is what I had handy. You could also use your plastic card an index card or a piece of your card stock. You don’t necessarily need to try to level out your layer of shaving cream.

Our first step is laying down a nice layer of shaving cream in our pan. Then drip on food coloring.

Next is to use your plastic knife or palette knife or other tool to pull designs through the surface of the shaving cream. You can start with something like traditional marbling, or just have fun.

Using just two colors that are either primary colors (red, yellow, blue) or a primary and one of its secondaries (red and orange or purple, yellow and green or orange, blue and green or purple) keeps you from making mud.

After you have a design you like, place your cardstock down on the colored surface of the shaving cream, and press it down gently to make sure the entire surface is touching the color to pick up the print.

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