Do you really need to glue backing paper onto sumi-e to make it wrikle-free? No, I figured out a way to straighten out ink wash paintings without gluing on backing paper.
What is Urauchi?
“Urauchi” involves gluing a sheet of paper to the back of the artwork paper to relieve wrinkles and add strength. It’s usually needed for sumi-e (ink wash paintings) and calligraphy.
Japanese paper shrinks when moisture is applied. Areas of the paper where ink is applied shrink, while the areas without ink don’t. Sumi-e involves painting with ink and water, so completed artwork is usually distorted and wrinkly. Urauchi is performed to smooth out these wrinkles.
But the process of Urauchi is rather tricky as it involves applying liquid glue in between the painting and the backing paper. So can an ink wash paintings be smoothed out without gluing on backing paper?
How to smooth out sumi-e without Urauchi
Every material I looked at said Urauchi is needed to de-wrinkle the artwork and see more contrast between the white paper and black ink. But, I experimented around and found that you can straighten out wrinkled sumi-e paintings without adding backing paper.
To make the sumi-e artwork flat and wrinkle free (without applying backing paper):
[0] Wait until the sumi-e painting is dry.
[1] Spray water onto the painting on a flat absorbent surface (eg. felt). Wait a couple of minutes until artwork is evenly wet.
[2] Pick up the wet artwork and place it on a dry, absorbent, flat surface (eg. MDF board).
[3] Lay the artwork flat.
[4] Place felt back on top of the artwork, and weight it down with a flat, heavy object (eg. cutting board or hardcover book).
[5] Leave until dry (overnight to be sure).
It’s now wrinkle-free, without urauchi backing!
Experiments
Using a smaller hard cover book as the weight:
There was a bit of wrinkling around the edges where the book wasn’t weighing it down (in the orchid painting above); it’s better to usee weights that cover the entire painting. If using a smaller book, place a flat board underneath.
Here’s a sumi-e painting with wrinkles all over it. Slide to see the dewrinkling process:
It’s become completely flat!
Now let’s try it out on artwork that has a strong crease due to warping (bottom edge of artwork):
The crease on the bottom edge is gone!
So you can simply wet sumi-e paintings and dry it flat without performing Urauchi or gluing backing paper.
The tip if you’re spraying water on the artwork when on MDF is to pick it up and move it to a dry part of the MDF when drying it. It’s easier to pick up and move the artwork if you spray it with water while it’s on felt. Move it to a dry part of MDF to dry.
Sumi-e paintings look so much better when there are no wrinkles or creases!
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