Project: Gyotaku: Fish Printing

Beaches equal the sea and the sea equals fish. Gyotaku is the traditional art of fish printing. The method was originally used by Japanese fisherman to record their catch. It's also a great project to do with kids. Gio and Eamon love it and often ask to do it. 

Project: Foam Printed Seashells

Foam plate printing is so fun and super easy. It's a great printing project to do with small children. We've used this technique for many things including thank you cards and gift tags making them much more personal. The beauty of this type of project is that any drawing looks great when it's printed. 

Prints: Sea Creatures: The Beach

Seahorse, foam print, copyright Nina Leung, 2014

I love doing these little foam prints. They're so simple and easy to do. I'll have to do a tutorial sometime and have my kids do it as they always turn out looking great. Sea creatures make such a great subject since they can be shaped or designed in so many different ways. Maybe it's their simplicity that makes the design so much fun and easy to adapt.

Octopus,  foam print, copyright Nina Leung, 2014

Cute Little Octopus,  foam print, copyright Nina Leung, 2014

Links: The Beach

Eamon and Gio on a typical day at Muir Beach. Cold!

How to bring the beach to your home.

To drink at a beach party.

A dreamy beach holiday.

My favorite beach movie.

Great beach-y read.

Sit outside and enjoy flipping through this and then this.

Perfect to take along to the beach.

Wear this to the beach, but in the San Francisco Bay Area it would more likely be this.

Paintings: Shells: The Beach

Bright Shells, watercolor, copyright Nina Leung, 2014

Iterations, watercolor, copyright Nina Leung, 2014

Watery Conch, watercolor, copyright Nina Leung, 2014

Research: The Beach

Continuing with the beach theme, I've found a few books to help consume me with images and words about the beach. I've been looking at Picasso: Bathers which is a wonderful tome full of Picasso's paintings of the beach. Most exciting are the paintings he did when hiding his affair with Marie-Therese. Noa Noa is a journal written by Paul Gaugin while visiting the islands of Tahiti. It's a fascinating look into a Frenchman's view of island life over a hundred years ago. A great daydreaming books is Seaside Style from Taschen. I like imagining myself in all of these rooms. And, one of my favorite books in the world, A Cabinet of Curiosities with lots of great illustrations of seashells. I can't get enough!