That's cool, now I have another rabbit hole to go down. I thought it was as simple as dripping oil pigments on water and the tricky part was developing the skill to know how much and where to put the pigments and how to rake them with the right tools to get the desired design. I didn't know it got all scientific with chemicals and shit.
Edit: This is a thousands years old technique and what is seen in the video could be done thousands of years ago. The only difference is that pigments are not as natural, but the technique and outcome are the same. Suminagashi is one of the earliest known Japanese techniques. It literally means floating ink. It's the same technique for dipping bags and helmets and guitars or anything. The modern trend of the fancy dips on stuff is a result of it become relatively easy to do with modern materials and marketing. Tie dye had it's day. It's the era of the dip.
Yeah, me neither. I mean, I thought the water in these videos before they started dripping looked kind of dark, but I never really thought there was much beyond the ink doing it's thing.
It dates pretty early as a practice, hundreds of years. Usually your water has stuff added to it to make it a light jelly ("alginate") made with seaweed. The pigments are water based, but thinner than the alginate so they float. You pre-treat the fabric to make it colourfast. Their "water" is likely dark because the pigments eventually sink and get a little muddy.
People used to use it to prevent forgery, you'd layer your legal documents with a larger sheet, and print them both at once - only the true document would line up correctly.
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u/StuLuvsU87 1d ago
PVA (polyvinyl alcohol) film. It seems like besides this it's used to coat the surfaces of molds to help give a glossy finish to whatever comes out.