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Gyotaku

15-gyotaku_school_finished.JPG (132456 bytes)


Dennis and I have been wanting to learn gyotaku for a while now.  I signed up for two workshops at the craft center, but they were both cancelled due to lack of enrollment.   So we studied the internet, and figured that it sounded fairly straight forward.   Apparently, you can use any type of paint, and any type of paper or fabric.  So we got tempera paint, newsprint, and an old sheet, and we went fishing!  After Dennis was done catching and cleaning the fish, we saved a few fish to try the gyotaku on.

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11-GyotakuSalmonGrouper.JPG (80578 bytes)

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I took a small fish home that day, and used other types inks and paints, and a different sheet.  I think that the printers' ink for linoleum blocks has a nice tackiness to it that works well for the fish print.  The tempera is a bit runny, but it worked well out in the sun on the boat because it dried on the fish.   First I took the prints from the fishing day, and painted in the eyes:

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12-GytakuSalmonGrouperWithEyes.JPG (23851 bytes)

12-GyotakuRed01WithEyes.JPG (88319 bytes)

Then I used the small fish that I took home to make some prints.  I tried the printers' ink, and I tried different colors of fabric paint.  Theoretically, these prints could be washed in a clothes washer, and the print will still be there (unlike the tempera paint ones that we did on the boat).

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First I printed the fish a few times on one sheet.

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Later I added two fish going the other way (by flipping the fish over).

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Then I put a tempera paint wash over the two non-conformist fish.


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Then I painted all the other fish too.  The two going the wrong way have brighter paint, and lots of glitter in the paint too.

Overall, there are two projects: one is to get on site "art" from the fish that we catch.  These will be on sheets, and in tempera paint or whatever suits us at the moment.  They are sort of fragile, and will need to be framed, and will be ruined if they get wet again.  The second project is to find paints that will work on t-shirts, and see if the shirts can actually be washed without losing the gyotaku image.  I'm thinking  that it might be difficult to print on a t-shirt because the weave isn't as fine as that of a bed sheet, but we'll see...

The background to this page is one that Dennis made from the first gyotaku print that we did together on New Years' Day.

My email address is LisaYanni at cox dot net