The recipient of this scroll had a Japanese persona and it was the perfect time to use a blank fan I had inherited from another scribe some time ago. It wasn’t until after I’d glued the ends to the end caps that I realized I should have done the tracing first, but it worked out okay. I also picked up a $20 LitEnergy A4 LED Copy Board Light Tracing Box that I could take places and an artist’s glove. They worked a treat transferring a pattern of koi I’d found somewhere on the internet.

Trying to do artwork on the uneven surface was an interesting challenge, made more so by the delicacy of the paper. This was not a fan that would be put to use as repeated opening and closing would quickly damage it.

I kept it relatively simple and applied a wash of blue to parts of the background to give it a bit of depth.

Materials: Printer, fan, ruler, Ames lettering guide, pencil, eraser, 01 micron pen, Winsor & Newton gouache, Finetec gold paint, Princeton heritage 2/0 round paint brush, Speedball Super Black ink, dip pen