watercolor on tissue paper

I’ve been thinking about making some videos to share, and I remembered that I had a couple that I made back in September. I never wrote about the experiments I did with watercolor and tissue paper, but I took some video of the process. It’s not the most exciting video, but they are relatively short, and pretty in a meditative way, so I hope you will enjoy them.

I was inspired after watching a short video about one-fold origami. I was captivated by the simplicity of the technique and by the beautiful shapes that could result.

My interest was piqued enough to try out an experiment. The idea I started with was to fold a piece of tissue paper once, drop watercolor along the fold with the help of a water brush, and see what would happen. I knew that the results couldn’t be predicted which appealed to my interest in chance operations.

I tried it a few times, and took photos of the result.

I was happy with the final look, but the photos couldn’t capture the best part–actually watching as the paint dropped, spilled, and spread along the fold and across the paper. On a whim I took a couple videos.

I was holding the camera while I was painting, so it’s a little wiggly, but I think they are neat to watch.

As I worked, I layered the pieces of tissue paper on top of each other, so in the end I had a small arrangement of different sheets of painted, once-folded paper.

Layering the tissue paper had the added benefit of the different colors soaking through the top papers, adding to the unexpected look of the final papers.

I haven’t done more with this technique since then, but it’s definitely fun to play around with, and there are infinite variations.

What do you think of the videos? Would you be interested in me posting more video content in the future, possibly with me talking, and if I’m feeling very brave, maybe with me on camera?