"facial"

 

This is another small book of anonymous faces that surface constantly when I draw as in New Facebook  and Double Sided  Later I use snippets of found text to direct the marks once they start to come alive. Since so many of these chancey portraits lately have been elderly and somewhat wrinkled, I needed an appropriate cover paper - hence my re-discovery of an old Japanese process with paper, Momigami. 

I had played with this process several years ago for a book about skin - Cutaneous .  

The process makes the paper tougher and more durable, yet flexible and soft like fabric. It depends whether you need a crisper paper and starch based glues will help you. I believe the Japanese craftsmen do make garments using this process with mulberry paper.

Playing with papers and gums and starches and information on the web, I have found some papers that work very well. I can go into more specific process notes if I get feedback from other interested book /paper artists. The paper on this book used cartridge paper not known for its wet strength, pomegranate ink, and aloe vera. 

After folding and kneading and dying the finished paper was sanded with fine wet and dry paper to give a soft, wrinkled, skin like finish. This paper was glued to a more robust thin card for the cover. The paper seems to have a memory for the creases and gluing or hot ironing it does not remove the wrinkles.

The images weremade using gouache, gesso, inks and waterbased stains from pomegranate, avocado and red gum onto 160gsm pastel paper. The book is 15cm x 13cm and is the only copy.