Gobolinks
/I found a book published in 1896 – made available on Project Gutenberg – that is prompting a project: Gobolinks by Ruth McEnery Stuart and Albert Bigelow Paine.
The book has a short introduction describing how to create the images (folding a paper…putting blots of ink on one side then closing the paper to create the ‘shadow’ side) and then some poetry about what the images ‘look like’ – goblins or insects or birds on a wire (lots of opportunity for imagination).
I decided to try some of my own gobolinks…using some food coloring that has been in the cabinet so long it had dried out completely. I rehydrated it and made a first attempt with some printer paper. Dropping the color from the food coloring bottles made huge, dark blobs!
After a few days, I decided to try again with some lightweight cardboard/card stock tiles that I could later overlay with a Zentangle pattern. I folded them in different ways.
My plan was to make a drop of food coloring and then moved the color around with a toothpick before closing the fold. I quickly realized that the lightweight cardboard absorbed the food coloring very quickly (glad I had a newspaper layer underneath). The others turned out reasonably well although the color is very dark. I’ll use the white gel pen when I overlay the patterns.
And I’ll dilute the color next time I make some Gobolink tiles!
