Tegaki Page
Direct Painting Techniques
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tegaki related topics
tegakizome
手描き染め
Tegaki literally means hand drawn, and a bit more loosely, hand applied with a brush. What's the difference?
To me, hand drawn implies that the majority of the imagery has been realized using a brush to apply the dyes, with very little or no assistance from resists. A resist may be along the lines of wax, rice paste, or even stencils – anything that prevents a portion of the dye from reaching the fabric as it is applied with the brush. Applied with a brush indicates that the colors were conveyed to the surface of the fiber using a brush, whether or not any other means was also employed – as in brushing the dyes by hand through a stencil.
Having said all of that, tegaki doesn't have to be a brush, or even dye for that matter. Applying rice-paste resist with a cone or brush also counts as tegaki – and using a tjanting tool to apply wax easily fits into this category as well.
It's a bit nit-picky, but there you are.
a few well known categories of tegaki
Kaga Noren
Kagan noren are elaborately, colorfully executed wedding curtains from Ishikawa Prefecture. It is a curtain the bride passes through the first time she enters her new family home. While rice-paste is often applied with a cone to help outline some of the imagery, it is just as often entirely drawn without the use of resist. Regardless, the dyes are always applied by hand and never stenciled.
Tegaki Yuuzen
There are a great many categories of yuuzen, tegaki yuuzen is one of them. However, in this case, tegaki yuuzen almost always refers to the fact that the dyes are brushed on, rather than silk-screened, with the help of resist to define the edges of the imagery. The earliest version of yuuzen was based on fan painting techniques and were painted much as scrolls were. This version is still practiced today as well.
Tegaki Sarasa
Sarasa, as with yuuzen, may be produced using a great many techniques, including vegetable printing, and silk screening. Tegaki sarasa is the most direct approach and permits the artist to dye individual pieces or smaller runs. This direct painting approach often yields a very appealing, more folksy look, and was commonly applied to cotton. Antique sarasa textiles are a favorite of people practicing tea ceremony.
