how to make a towel brush

You will need: a disposable wooden chopstick, an old terry cloth towel, two or more ordinary rubber bands (or one large, thick rubber band as shown), water.

Cut a square piece (about 8 cm x 8 cm) out of the towel. Moisten it with water. Fold it into a triangle. Place the narrower end of the chopstick on the middle of the long edge of the folded triangle. Fold the left edge of the triangle diagonally over the stick.

Press down on the covered stick, rolling it tightly towards the right edge to make a firm, pointed tip at the end. Wrap tightly with the rubber band(s) to keep the towel in place.
 

Dip the towel brush into your bottle of sumi ink and draw the contour of your chosen image. To apply color, use a different (clean) towel brush, or a regular etegami brush. I used a regular brush for color.

After some practice, you may find a better way to make your own towel brush. If so, please share your ideas with me. I seem to have gone as far as I can with this method. The coarseness of the lines is intriguing, and I hope to come back to it after a good long break.

towel brush etegami

The town of Senshuu (known for being the origin of towel production in Japan) is calling for etegami painted by "towel brush," so I thought I would give it a try. A towel brush is basically a chopstick or other stick that has a small piece of terry cloth towel wrapped around one end, fastened tightly with rubber bands.

There are no hard and fast rules about how to make a towel brush, but I basically followed the directions in the image posted below. The merit --or charm-- of using a towel brush instead of a regular ink brush is supposed to be the coarseness and sloppiness of the lines. I certainly had difficulty affixing the towel tightly enough to the stick to use it with any control at all. And I quickly learned that, when dipped into my sumi ink bottle, the towel brush soaks up the ink so fast I have trouble keeping the bottle filled. It feels kind of wasteful, to tell the truth...

The dragonfly (top photo) was my first attempt. I hated it. But later it started to grow on me. The words are from a children's song about dragonflies and sunsets.

The next three attempts. I hated these too. The cucumber says "(Summer is over but) I still have a role to play." The open jar says "I let the fireflies go."

I was pretty disappointed with my towel brush etegami attempts up to this point, so for the next three I made even simpler images. I also used a gel pen to write the words, because I had to fit too many words on each card to attempt it with the thick towel brush. Each quotes a line from a different poem by Japanese poet Kudo Naoko. Top left is a yawning cloud. Top right is a grape dreaming of becoming the moon. Bottom middle shows scattered pieces of a broken heart waiting to be picked up. I hate these too, but I'll look at them again next week and maybe I will feel differently.

Obviously I need lots more practice. Especially practice making towel brushes. The sample art on the poster (top photo) is quite charming though. I wish I could produce something like that. We'll see.