Seika classes: making an Uchiwa (nihonga)

In my last post about my Nihonga class which you can read here <click I wrote that we made a fan.
Or at least I thought that the piece of paper we worked on would be made into a fan with the wood and all later.
But no! It was a try-out for the actually thing this last week.

Completely to my surprise because I had heard no mention of it in the previous lesson.
The teacher all handed us a blank Uchiwa, that is a traditional, round shaped Japanese fan.
I was not prepared for this and thus had no idea of what to make on the fan. I started sketching away frantically. It had to have two things on it according to my classmates: Another fish and the flower we made a sketch of in the botanical garden weeks before.

Finally settling on a design I started to paint on the crisp, white fan.
I forgot to take any pictures of the process because I was so hell-bent on not screwing up that nice uchiwa, I think I was in complete concentration, ignoring everything around me only to snap out of this state when I was done. So here are some pictures of the finished result.

front

I quickly designed a Japanese name logo for myself of my name in Katakana script. Because Dote-sensei had said that the back had to be stamped when I asked him what had to be on the back side, so I thought it had to be a name stamp. People thought it was very funny and shouted my name through the classroom every time they flipped the fan to look at the back side.

back

Details:

New gold leaf technique, gold leaf flaking

Name logo on gold leaf circle