Suminagashi (墨流し, floating ink) is a Japanese paper and cloth marbling technique. The procedure is to transfer ink of alternating colors with brushes to a water surface. After warping the initial ring structures by either blowing or fanning air onto the surface, the marble structure is transferred to a paper by just putting it on the water.

I created a small python script that generates virtual Suminagashis using numpy, scipy, matplotlib, and seaborn.

How it works?

First, a number of circles of uniformly distributed radii around a number of sources of random origins are constructed. Second, the circles are transformed such that they stay within a square region and do not interfere with each other. Third, a continuous random potential is generated that follows a power law in it’s spectral density distribution. The gradient of this potential is used as a static vector field that warps the set of circles by mapping each circle point over a number of iterations. Finally, the circles are plotted on top of each other starting with the largest radius for each source.

a few suminagashis