Artist Book - Sumi sink paper

Sumi - Sink Art

A very cool technique is to paint large swathes of sumi ink onto a piece of paper that has wet strength (it doesn't fall apart when you get it wet).  Give it a little time for the lacquer in the ink to dry (maybe 10 seconds) and then bring it to the sink and run it under water.  The dry edges stay black, but the ink that is still wet is washed away and leaves interesting marks.  I used a piece of Arches Text Wove for this cover and loved it.  

I was making this book away from home and needed a "tape" to sew the binding and I looked down and saw I was wearing sneakers with a purple shoe laces. It just happened to match some of the inner page colors..... so what if I walked around without shoelaces, the things we do for our art!