Gyotaku Part II

 

E is for Echinoderm. 33x45 cm.    Print by Mary M Payne

The next step in my research was to decide on a format and a paper for a support.   Since I studied printmaking for some years I had a supply of Arches BFK Rives, probably the most sought after paper for all printmaking.  

It is a soft 100% cotton “vellum” without acid and each sheet is water-marked .  Each piece has two natural deckled edges and two tear deckles.  Those are the soft fringes that edge these mould-made papers from France.

BFK Rives comes in several sizes, the smallest is 56x76 cm at 280 grams per square meter costs 7.45 euros a sheet.   The 80x 120 sheet is 300grams and goes for 15.95 euros for one sheet. But since we bought our paper for the print class in bulk, I paid less than that. 

Pricey, yes, but this paper is so gorgeous and with the art supply store shuttered because of Covid, I decided I wanted to use this for my support. 

 With the fish being large and my instinct to work large I decided to lay out a composition with an ink sprayed piece of rice paper sprinkled with a few imprints of a leaf of Chinese cabbage and the fish torn from my Gyotaku pages.  I decided to keep it loose and informal. 

    The acid yellow- green I chose is a bit startling and perhaps hard to place with other colors but as a piece by itself it was good.    I showed Corinne, and she wanted me to cut it in half and use at least one half in the finished series.  

I hesitated. There is that moment when you think you have done a finished composition and the idea of tearing it in half is well....outrageous.    But half way through the next week I got over that and divided the piece in two.   I am using the two halves as the front and back covers ....so to speak.  I added another fish to the back page to illustrate  S for sea bass.

To adhere the rice paper to the BFK Rives and the rice paper fish to the background I used Golden" gel matte" only on the underside of each.  I did not want to risk a shiny appearance by using it to seal the top.

Next, I had to decide on what I wanted to depict in the series with the 10 letters of the word: Emprientes.   As you can see there are three letter E’s in the word. ...and no fish that I know of starts with the letter E...  ( except perhaps Eel) so this is what I came up with:

E- Echinoderm 

M- Moules ( Mussels)

P- Pulpe ( Octopus)

R- Red Starfish

E- Endangered

I-  Imprint (Gyotaku)

N- Neptune Grass

T- Tide Pools

E- Ecosystem

S- Sea Bass

So for the first half of my severed “masterpiece“ of the pea green sea...I start with the word Echinoderm, the classification of all fish, all 26,000 species of them...more than all the other invertebrates put together.