Chinese Rice Paper

[sidthecat]

I have a couple of Chinese notebooks about the house: I gave one to my boss to play with and he liked it, but he uses his pens to draw with. I should drag one out and see what works.

[Honeybadgers]

the simple rice paper is a LOT of fun for brush art. but it is TERRIBLE for fountain pens. any pointed pen will instantly tear and fountain pens just bleed like mad. But my brush pens loooooove it.

[tamiya]

What are you all resting your "rice paper" on when writing? Just straight onto your hard table or writing pad?

 

Usually when doing ink/brush Chinese painting the art paper rests on an absorbent thick pad (eg an inch thick sheaf of same paper). Chinese ink has pigment solids; ink goes onto absorbent paper and the carrier liquid wicks away quickly - different to watercolour papers which you can flood & wash with your wet brush.

 

There's also many other types of socalled "rice paper"... some are more like butchers paper, like the big squares we buy for lining the mahjong table.

Edited October 8, 2018 by tamiya

[Lucas Barros]

[inkstainedruth]

Somehow I have missed this thread before now.... 

The "edible" type of rice paper is available at cake decorating supplies.  I haven't tried writing on it, per se, but have used it for specialty cakes and confections, painting on it with paste food coloring.  

I often have used it for edible "books" (I have several sizes of cake pans that  are shaped like open books), where the decorations are painted on rice paper as illustrations or actual pages that turn.  I did one a couple of years ago for an SCA 12th Night subtlety competition (subtleties are presentation pieces, often edible) that were served at the end of each course of a feast in the Middle Ages; a wedding cake would be a modern version).  The theme was "the season" and I printed off a illustration from a reprint of a manuscript of Tacunim Sanitatis (a medieval treatise on food and health) for the page on "Winter", taped it to a lightbox, and then taped the rice paper over it and painted the illustration with the food coloring.  On the "facing" page, I calligraphed the English translation of the text onto paper and then painted it on another piece of rice paper the same way.

Ironically, I was going in a completely different direction from two of the other entrants, who made Yule logs (the fourth person made lollypops from old candy molds of a knight on horseback -- his family used to run a candy store).

Because I'm using the rice paper for edible purposes, it wouldn't have occurred to me to write on it with pen and ink.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth