STEP 6: Making your PaperCasting

Okay, those of you who have stuck with it to this point should have:
-planned your design (for your first try it could be something very small and simple)
-conditioned and rolled your clay (if your design is not small, there's also a post on joining strips of clay)
-transferred the design onto the clay
-cut, backed, and baked your mold
(if not, click on the links and go for it!)

Hooray! you are ready to make your test casting. There's a lot of detail here for those who really want a crisp, top-quality casting - you can just plop in some pulp and sponge the water out and see how it turns out if you aren't picky or want a rough look - but you won't be able to tell what defects you might have in the mold.

First you make some pulp. You will need a blender, a strainer, plastic tubs/bowls, cotton linter or paper, methycellulose optional. For filling your mold you will need flat toothpicks, clean flat sponge, thin terrycloth towel.This will not hurt your blender nor make it toxic. (Rinse or wash new sponges - sometimes the color bleeds)

I like to use cotton linters from Twinrocker but you can use other cotton linter, or cheap watercolor paper from a pad from the crafts store, or good paper scraps from your friendly print- or book-maker --- or just about any paper in a pinch but I really think you will be happier with something nice, like a good pure cotton. You will get good detail and no discoloration over time. You won't get a crisp result with paper towels, toilet paper, etc. I'd use copy paper quality at least.

Your first casting is your test casting to see how the mold works, so using pure white will make that easier - it helps you see detail.

Using additives is optional but I learned that I get the best results with a little methycellulose to help all elements of the casting adhere better. You must add it while the water is moving, using the hole in the lid of the blender. It takes less than half of a 1/4 tsp. measure for one blenderful of water. Some papermakers add a little PVA (white glue - teaspoon per blenderful maybe)

If you use sheets of cotton linter, you will need a piece a little larger than your casting mold.  Don't worry about making too much as it's easy to save for another time.

Fill the blender with water, start it blending and gradually pour in a small amount of methycellulose if you have it. While it blends, put the lid on the methylcellulose jar and then put center plug back in the lid of the blender, and by then it will have blended enough.
Tear up the linter sheet into pieces about 1" and drop in. It takes a little experience to tell how much - probably not over about 6x7 inches total. If you are using paper instead of linter, it helps to let it soak a while. Blend until you feel it is pretty evenly soupy - maybe a minute. Pour into a strainer over a bowl or plastic container and shake around a bit until some of the water is out and it's a very wet lump. Dump into another container. You can put the water back in the blender and add more linter and blend again.

Set your mold in front of you, have some flat toothpicks (not round pointy ones), a clean flat sponge, and a fairly thin terry towel handy. Unless there are no narrow or deep parts to your mold, you will probably have to "toothpick" it to ensure a really crisp casting. This is done by taking a small blob of pulp and setting it near the part you are working on, teasing a little bit into a shape similar to the hole and putting it in. You can use fingernails for really tight bits, but mostly the toothpick works well to tamp it down in. Make sure you get pulp into all the corners and don't feel the hard clay of the mold when you push down with the toothpick. It takes a little practice but you can tell by feel and sometimes by look whether you have enough pulp in. You don't want it hard, just somewhat firm with no holes where the clay is not well covered. If your backing is colored, you shouldn't see the color through the pulp. Note: We are still filling only the holes or depressions in your mold. Sponge off excess water and push pulp all down in.

When you feel you have gotten all the depressions filled and sponged off to check, you will cover the whole mold with blobs of pulp. After initial "patting" down to make the blobs spread to cover it all, you should have it more than 1/4 inch thick all over.
You will need to gently slap it with the flat of your hand - you should hear "slap" and see some water flying. Think patting someone's cheek. Keep pushing it back in toward the middle from around the edges so it is within your borderlines or near your raised or lowered edging. You should slap it for some time until it becomes a cohesive sheet - you will tell a difference. Turn it so you are slapping from different directions. This takes a couple of minutes or so. If it just won't smooth out, you have gotten it too dry. All pulp put into or on the mold should be pretty wet. You should need to sponge up puddles underneath the mold now and then.

When you think it is smooth and cohesive, make sure it is all in close or within the edge you want, then make the "deckle" by using your fingertips to tap the outer edge until it is very thin, you should see the clay through it. If you see clay anywhere else though, add more wet pulp.
Check the evenness of your edges and then start sponging water out. Lay the sponge down and gently press, allow to come back up and suck out water. Squeeze it out into your container and move to a new spot. Now is the time your deckle "sets" so check it closely -- if you need to add pulp, make it very wet and pat into place. You can gently pull back  if the pulp is too close or going off the edge.
When you are happy with your edge, continue sponging until you can't get much of any water out any more.

Now you "towel". Lay your  towel on top of the pulp and press with fairly flat fingers all over your mold. Lift up, move to a dry part of towel and do it again.Now turn the mold, move the towel, and press more. Keep towel-pressing until it's hardly damp. You should be feeling depressions in the mold and see some of them and have a firm surface. If your fingers aren't tired you probably haven't done enough, especially if the mold is large.

If you are anxious to see it, lean the mold near moving air from a vent. I usually keep a stiff cardboard (or a tile) underneath as the clay will sag. A small fan is OK but often the edges will dry too fast and start to warp - you can put weight on the corners to help flatten while the rest dries. Do not try to take out your casting until it is quite thoroughly dry or the letters may stay in while the backing comes off!. I always allow at least overnight to dry unless there's a good reason to speed things up.

To remove the casting use something like a butterknife or letter opener to slip under the edges and work your way around and around, gently working it up.If it seems to stick, take your time, keep oging aroudn coaxing gently.. If bits do stay in the mold you can get them out with a pin and glue on with with PVA.

Other problems will be addressed in "Fixing and Refining Your Mold" to follow.
Feel free to send questions!

This is much easier to demo than to write about, you can get personal help and learn many variations on these basic techniques by having a workshop in your area.
Or, stay tuned for information about online classes where we will go step by step through several projects with feedback - not as fun as live workshops but it won't matter where you are, and there will be a "group" to experience it with.

an Anniversary Book

For my parents' 60th anniversary we gathered a few months early - the only time all their children me and my siblings) were available to be in the same place at the same time. So we thought it would be great to surprise them with a gift on the actual day. But then we missed it because I didn't really know the right date!

At any rate, our project was successful otherwise.
At our gathering (with the stealthy help of two nephews) I gave each of the seven siblings an unsewn signature with instructions to do whatever they wanted on the pages - that would be celebratory and have something about their family. We ended up with photos, notes, drawings, quite a variety. Another signature included a list of all the family members in order of birth (or marriage into the family)

One brother is a woodcarver and he made a wonderful box for the book to go in.

I used a binding method that is entirely undo-able if ever needed, but more importantly, that allows for any thickness of pages and will lie flat for easy viewing. (Learned at a workshop at the St. Louis Calligraphy Guild - I believe it was by Micheal Jacobs). My father is a geographer and made several trips to Guatemala so it was appropriate to use a map for the cover. Here's the title page- a piece of Guatemalan cloth wrapped the book inside the box.

experimenting with oil paint and calligraphy

lettering  in and on water-soluble oil paint with venice turp glaze, canvas is 18x24 inches

this was the blocked-in color, maybe I like it better than the finished piece.

While I like the final result of my first try with oils, the lettering is not very good as the surface was not pleasant to work on nor the paint to control. I had originally wanted to try on a panel but didn't have one when I was ready to start.. So next I decided to try that (a wood panel) with acrylic gouache for the first layer and writing and use oil glazes over it. I figure since you can put oil paint over acrylic that should work, and allow the richness and enamel-like finish I was interested in.

So I got some small - just 6x8 inch - panels for experimenting. I coated this one with water absorbent ground and did a background painting with diluted acrylic guoache

I really liked it, almost didn't write on it. Then I wrote with acrylic gouache and metal pen - it worked pretty well although occasionally the pen actually dug into the soft ground. It was certainly easier to work with than the water-soluble oil on primed canvas, even though I tried a variety of mediums, etc.

Then I coated it with the venice turp oil glaze and did some more painting into it (with the oils) to add some other color and help the words be a little more "under the surface". It doesn't show up in the photos much differently unless I get where the gloss gets in the way of photographing.

At any rate, I don't know if the oil has enough barrier from the ground with the thin acrylic layer or if it will matter in the long run, but at least the basics worked. I have two more small panels and  plan to continue experimenting and learning about the possibilities before trying another large piece.

Chinese and English Calligraphy (transcribing historical document)

British document from 1762 saved by Chinese family of calligraphers

An account of my experience during a visit to Utah in April of 2006:

My daughter and son-in-law have taken calligraphy classes in college and since he spent two years in Taiwan they also took Chinese calligraphy last year and gave me a couple of lessons at Christmas time.

So I by pre-arrangment, on my latest visit I ended up going straight from the airport to the last Chinese Calligraphy class of the semester at Brigham Young University. They have a fourth or fifth generation calligrapher who has won many awards in China and other countries who decided to come to the U.S. when his son came to school in Salt Lake City. His name is Duanran Fan as translated/americanized in his book or Fan Zhuan Ran as my son-in-law puts it, being more the proper Chinese way. No one ever used his name, probably because we wouldn't say it right! According to the bio in his book he has been a calligrapher for over 40 years and is the only calligraphy professor in Yunan province.

He was very gracious, asked what questions I had - of course I didn't know enough to have any. So he demonstrated quite a bit and then spent some time explaining how to tell if the calligraphy is good. Very familiar principles, like keeping symmetrical and good proportions, having equal white spaces in various parts of the character, having contrast in the stroke - a bit of narrowing and widening or smooth and squared on one end and rounder/rougher on the other-

teacher demo

(One disappointment with the few Oriental calligraphy books I've seen is that they don't explain the amount of pressure and release or tell you where it happens - there may be little arrows of direction and such but often the change of direction is not so much a stroke as a pushing down of the brush, often through wrist action. Thanks to modern digital technology I did get a couple of very brief video clips to watch over and over as I practice -not that I expect to do real oriental work but to improve on control of the brush can't hurt.)

Fan Zhuan Ran and me at  BYU

He had me demo western lettering a little (pretty rusty) and my son-in-law who was translating told him a bit about how some of the styles I was showing were from hundred of years ago - The teacher got very excited and asked when we could meet with him again.

He seemed interested in history so I looked for some handouts on historical alphabets, warmed up a lot to be able to write better, etc. It turned out that what he wanted was help with an old document handed down in his family. He had brought it to this country when he came, wanting to find a professor of archaic English, then realized that it wasn't the language but the lettering that was the problem. So my son-in-law and I spent about 2 1/2 hours transcribing this document from 1762. 

detail of document saved by Chinese family for over 200 years

It is a British legal document - was fun to see where there were corrections, differences in writing where a blank was filled in later, etc. It really took a little detective work. The family had thought it was a letter with possible royal or noble connections since there is a seal with a crown, a tax stamp, another stamp or seal of some type, etc. But it is actually very boring, mostly legalese where they used 50 words when one would do and give multiple descriptions of various properties. There is one interesting bit where if legally demanded someone has to pay one peppercorn after one year - for rent I believe. When we got back to my parent's, my dad called a neighbor who spends half the year in England searching old documents and he came and gave a little advice on words we were unsure of (said this document was much more recent than what he works with).
Technology is so amazing, my son-in-law had taken photos with his digital camera and we were able to proofread by having the document and the transcription up on the computer screen together-

After we transcribed that afternoon, we joined a calligraphy class (western) having a session in the library's Special Collections so the Chinese professor got to see and in some cases handle some beautiful old manuscripts, compare ages, and see some of the similarities with his document - like holes down the side for making guidelines.

The very best part though, is that "to give me a more real idea of Chinese calligraphy" this gentleman wrote out two scrolls for me  -on 200 year-old paper that had been "found" in his family's "stuff". The characters are written over pale wood-block prints from when the paper was made. He says they are better than the ones in his book (through pulling strings he and my son-in-law tracked down the last available copy of his instruction book that has a color section of his work in the back). He said he has not met many calligraphers over here and wanted to share with someone who would appreciate it. There are flecks of gold in the paper that he said will turn red over time.

Sorry I can't get the images to go next to each other - I'd love a good translation of the scrolls if any readers are Chinese :)

The photo of me and the Chinese teacher (above) is from when we went back to class when he was picking up final projects, and I got him to write a couple of symbols I wanted to see - I have to say that I cannot yet appreciate the "artistic style" as much, but watching him do it is absolutely wondrous! 

more teacher demo

I got invited to demo western lettering for the Chinese calligraphy guild if I ever happen to be in China - wish that were likely, but I think I would feel very unqualified anyway.

Here's a higher-resolution image for those who want to look closely 

and here's the transcript in google docs  if anyone is interested.

Hope you enjoyed my bit from the past. I still haven't figured out how to mount or frame the scrolls. He said he hadn't had time to mount them and suggested simply laying them under glass in frames so they are not glued, but that would take some pretty long frames.........