A new drawing underway this week, progress shots above. I am using replacement tissue paper for the old Kozu Shi I used in the past for my large drawings. No longer in production, I used my very last piece of it a few weeks ago, and had already experimented and tried a few others before settling on this one. I'm currently drawing this new work on a half sheet of Imitation Japanese (approx. 50x38cm) which is very nice, but takes the ink in a slightly different way from the old Kozu Shi; wherever the pen pauses, a small blot forms especially if the pen is new and full. It's nice and characterful and I definitely enjoy using it for simple linear work and monotypes, but ideally I would like to find a closer match for Kozu Shi for the kind of work pictured above.
Then somebody asked me on Instagram if I was using gampi. For all my obsession with Japanese papers, amazingly I hadn't heard of gampi before - research required! I ended up on a fascinating journey and learned so much on the way, understanding so much more about why my papers behave the way they do, and decided to give some gampi papers a go.
My first port of call is always Jackson's in London, who have a wonderful selection of different papers, and where I always bought my Kozu Shi (in fact, they were marvellous when I discovered production had ceased and rang them up and hunted out every last sheet they had left for me, which lasted several years as I 'saved it for best'). It was time to place a new order with Jackson's for some more Fabriano Rosaspina which I use for Binky paintings anyway, so I looked for gampi and found they do lots! I bought a sample pack of Awagami papers which arrived yesterday, the papers are so gorgeous I was drooling over them all, the presentation of the pack is simply beautiful with lots of information about each paper and I definitely found two or three which I will try.
Then somebody asked me on Instagram if I was using gampi. For all my obsession with Japanese papers, amazingly I hadn't heard of gampi before - research required! I ended up on a fascinating journey and learned so much on the way, understanding so much more about why my papers behave the way they do, and decided to give some gampi papers a go.
My first port of call is always Jackson's in London, who have a wonderful selection of different papers, and where I always bought my Kozu Shi (in fact, they were marvellous when I discovered production had ceased and rang them up and hunted out every last sheet they had left for me, which lasted several years as I 'saved it for best'). It was time to place a new order with Jackson's for some more Fabriano Rosaspina which I use for Binky paintings anyway, so I looked for gampi and found they do lots! I bought a sample pack of Awagami papers which arrived yesterday, the papers are so gorgeous I was drooling over them all, the presentation of the pack is simply beautiful with lots of information about each paper and I definitely found two or three which I will try.
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