Cornish John Dory Gyotaku Print

Here's another of my new prints.  This time of a Cornish John Dory.  What a beautiful fish!  So challenging to print though.  If you aren't familiar with Gyotaku the process is to take an actual fish, yes really, and apply ink to the surface of the fish.  When this has been done a light paper is pressed over the surface, in this case I used a Chinese rice paper.  I use a high quality permanent acrylic screen printing ink.  In the printing process the paper gets stretched by the fish and isn't suitable to put in a frame.  Not yet anyway.  Read on...

Now I leave my print to dry out overnight.  The following day I use the traditional Japanese technique of Uruachi to make the print flat enough to be put into a frame.    First I take a flat board larger than my paper, I lie the print face down on the board.  I then take a glue I make myself from flour and water and paste the back of the print.  I use a very soft wide goat hair brush and can take all the creases and air bubbles out from the paper so it's completely flat.  Finally I take a second sheet and press that with a palm brush onto the glued print.  This now gets left to dry for 24 hours and then it's dry and I can lift the flat print off the board.  

My newer prints all come with a certificate to show they are authentic and they have the date the print was made and where the specimen came from.  

The print will be wrapped in tissue paper and posted in a poster tube.