Creative processes......

When doing a project it's always a very creative process when you come to choosing the  types and colours of the papers you want to use and then the patterns or designs that will embellish it.

It's interesting being in a Hanji group and seeing how the same project can look so different when completed by different 'Hanji artists'. I use this term 'Hanji artist' because we are all creating our pieces dependant on our own creative experiences and each person  uses different colours and design based on those experiences.

I find that my work tends to have an Asian influence  after spending more than a decade living and working in both South East Asia and the Far east. I was taught by a Korean lady who was very traditional in her methods of doing this craft. She would never use masking tape for the joints but instead we had to cut small strips of white paper and place them over the joints to smooth them out.  We couldn't use wallpaper paste to put the paper on so  we had to use flour and water paste, which only lasted a day or so before it started to smell. She was a purist and took her craft very seriously and although at times the work could have been done more quickly using other methods  I greatly admired her and am glad I had the opportunity to learn the 'hard' way first.

Some in my group have more western backgrounds and they express themselves using more modern, bright and bold colours.  They enjoy being creative and putting  their special touch to the hanji pieces. Others are hesitant to choose either plain colours or paper printed with designs in case they make a wrong decision and they regret it later. We are all different but in the end it doesn't matter what our processes or backgrounds are as long as we are creating and enjoying what we're doing.

I have several books of patterns and a folder that contains photocopies of designs I use often. I'm always searching for more ideas and I stash them away for that special piece of hanji I'm going to do very soon.

Here is what I created this week. This fish design is used a lot in hanji but  I hadn't used it  before so I cut it out and placed it directly over some printed paper. 

Fish design

Design on the lid