The Final Cut & Practice Techniques
The final part of the rosetta is the cut. This is performed from the north end of the cup, at the top of your fishtail, terminating at the base of your initial shake design in the south. It’s important to cut through right along the y-axis to keep both sides of the rosetta symmetrical. Refer back to Lesson 4.5 to brush up on this manoeuvre.
While the cut seems relatively straightforward, it is an essential part of the rosetta, as it defines the symmetry of your design. Pay attention to your flow rate and pouring height. You can refer to the specifications of the pin-drop technique (see Lesson 4.2). Too slow a flow rate and low pouring height will result in a thick line, as you are close to dragging at this point.
The completed rosetta design.
Practice Techniques
Squiggles
A good way to get the hang of the fishtailing element that forms the top to the rosetta is to practice this technique on its own. Try pouring some simplified designs that focus on fewer elements. One helpful approach is we call squiggles. This involves simply pouring zigzags on the canvas. Try pouring three or more zigzags per 240-ml cup — anywhere you can fit them across the surface of a drink. Repeating this movement several times in quick succession over a series of practice pours will help you build valuable muscle memory. The trick here, while trying to encode this movement, is to not confuse your brain by adding other challenges such as cutting or shaking.
Practicing squiggles.
Wings
After you’ve got the hang of making scribbles, we suggest you try adding one more element. The wing of the swan design is drawn by using the fishtailing manoeuvre together with the cutting technique. As you can see in this video, towards the end of the pour, Shinsaku uses the cutting technique to etch a smooth inner arch at the edge of the wing.