Japanese Masa Paper

Just playing with art supplies. The process is quite interesting and takes several days. First you wet the paper and crinkle it, then I painted the reverse (non-shiny) side and let it dry. The colors did not come through enough so I repeated the process on the shiny side and let it dry. Then the dry paper gets pasted onto cold press watercolor paper (it is too thin by itself) as a backer. I actually used some old experimental sheets (recycling!) that I no longer needed. Their colors did not show through. The Japanese paper is sufficiently opaque.

I used Chinese watercolor pigments (Marie's) and Chinese brushes. After the paper was dry, I thought about what I wanted to put on it. I decided on the blossoms first. After a couple of weeks, I tackled the other paper and decided to use Chinese ink for a landscape. The inspiration for the first was a photo I took of crabapple blossoms in the spring; for the second a photo I took while hiking in Alta, Utah. My paintings were very loose representations. I was not trying to be too technical, just having fun!