Woodblock RoundTable

Posted by Dave Bull at 9:11 AM, June 11, 2008

Finally, after nearly two months since the previous posting, work on the next print - The Seacoast in Summer - has begun.

What have I been doing during that time? Well, the edition for the Forest in Spring had to be printed (two batches of 100+ sheets each), which took a day or two! After that, I made a 10-day trip to Canada on the occasion of daughter Fumi's graduation from the University of British Columbia. And unfortunately, those two 'jobs' didn't line up exactly, so I had a week-long gap between the end of the printing and the start of the trip, too short to get involved with starting the next print. But that time wasn't wasted, as I used it for pushing the construction on my downstairs workroom along a bit. But I'm safely back in Tokyo now, and ready to get back in harness on the Solitudes project!

But I have some 'bad' news for you. For the first five prints in this series, I have been very open with most of the production process, showing everything from first drawings right through to the finished print. This time though, I am going to do it a different way - I'm not going to show any photographs, etc. that will have enough detail to allow you to see what the print will look like. Here's why.

The Seacoast in Summer is (chronologically) the first of the visits to the sea in this series. It was actually my first camping trip to that location, and it was very enjoyable, exploring the new place. I enjoyed beautiful clear weather ... sunny skies during the day, and ... a beautiful full moon that night.

Hmm ... full moon ... deep dark sky ... water ... The print kind of suggests itself, doesn't it.

And that's the problem. That design has indeed 'suggested itself' to pretty much every person working in the shin-hanga field, getting on for a century now. The moon hangs there in the sky, and below it, we see a glittery reflection path in the water ... Beautiful of course, but ... kind of cliché by now.

Now it wouldn't be so bad for me to make a print like that - after all, although the design may be a bit hackneyed, it could still be 'beautiful', and I'm sure that's what the collectors want. But I'm thinking that I can take a bit of a different approach, and have an idea in mind ...

But - I don't want to show or talk about this before it's done. I want the collectors to pick up the book, read the story first, and then turn the final page of the book to see the print in context!

So for this print - and I think for this print only - I'm going to keep the curtains closed on the production process. Only after the books have been shipped, and I know that they have been received, will I put the web page up for everybody to see.

Whether or not this print will be successful is far from clear to me just yet, but anyway, this is how we're going to play this one. I ask everybody to please be patient, and I hope that you will understand when you see the finished version!

Discussion [3]

Posted by Dave Bull at 10:38 AM, April 16, 2008

Incredible that this one is taking so much time ... there is a lot of detail in those ground cover blocks, and with all the other jobs competing for attention, it's going very slowly ...

Anyway, the blocks were finally 'finished' a couple of weeks back, and since then, I've been playing around with them, trying this and that, generally getting familiar with how they work together.

This is a block set that would be very suitable for one of those experiments where the same blocks could be used to make a series of completely different prints - early morning, deep midnight, etc. etc. I don't have the freedom to do that (right now), as the scene is basically set; this is supposed to be the view I see when emerging from my tent in the pre-dawn mist. Here's the quote from the story at the point where the image comes in:

"But I'm pretty much wide awake now, and although I do lie back on the mat in my comfortable bag, the sky is starting to show a faint light, and soon the birds are chirping their welcome to the new day. There's not much else for it but to obey their call, and get going on the day's activities. I slip my clothes on and step outside. It's quite misty; the trees immediately around me are clearly visible, but those just a short distance away are blurred, and behind those the forest fades into shadows. The pre-dawn air is of course still quite chilly, and damp with dew. A bit of a heavier sweater would have been a better choice to bring along on this trip, but as I know the day will warm up once the sun gets a chance to work its magic, it's not a problem ..."

So anyway, I've got some stuff to show. None of these are 'the print', as I am still not satisfied with what has come off the blocks so far, and have more tests planned, but they should still be interesting for people to peruse.

It's also worth noting that none of these were intended as 'prints', in the sense of 'finished' works. I really play around with these sample sheets as I am making them. I run a few sheets at a time, and even if I may think "Hmm, that sky looks pretty good," I will still put a sky that is 'too dark' on the next sheet, simply to see what it looks like, or that sheet may get an experimental version of a tree trunk, or whatever.

So here's a selection from the different proof runs made over the past couple of weeks. The earliest ones are kind of gloomy, and since then I've been trying to work out how the light should spill out into the image ... I'd be interested to hear what people think of these ...

'Stretch' to read the full entry | Separate page (with discussion [11])

Posted by Dave Bull at 9:40 AM, March 31, 2008

At last ... after years of procrastination, I have opened a new webshop, where people can browse (and purchase) my varied prints and collections. Everything I have made over the past nineteen years since issuing my first prints is here, from both 'brands', my own 'Seseragi Studio' prints, and the 'Mokuhankan' publications.

That's the good news. The 'bad news' is that this is a Japanese-language site. English readers already have pretty good access to my work through the woodblock.com site, but development of the Japanese site has fallen far behind in recent years, and now catches up.

But anybody is free to visit - even if you can't read anything ... lots of 'pretty pictures'!

Discussion [0]

Posted by Dave Bull at 1:30 PM, March 23, 2008

I've been getting mail again, asking why no updates ... Nothing new to answer about that - just the usual that it's difficult to find time to talk about the work, while at the same time getting it done!

Anyway, apologies for the procrastination on putting something here. Let's try to make up for it today!

First, let's deal with the 'bad' news - I don't have anything I can show you to give you a good clear idea of what the print will look like. This one will have no key block at all, and the print will be made up of multi-layering of colour blocks. So there is no actual 'drawing' as such, to reproduce here.

I myself can refer to a Photoshop mock-up I have made, with those layers stacked up and tinted in an attempt to get a handle on what the result will be like, but I really don't want to put that image here. Simply it would give everybody the wrong idea about what to expect. The Photoshop construction is just a tool to help me move along the progress - it isn't what the print will 'look like'.

But I have no problem with showing you the blocks themselves ... you can then do exactly the same thing that I am currently doing - study them and try to get a handle on what colours/gradations/etc. to use when I finally sit down with the printing tools.

So here is a series of small snapshots of the block set as it currently stands, partway through the carving. Let's look at them in order of their 'position' in the image, starting with the most distant, and coming forward step by step ...

Nothing much to see on the first block - it will be used for a background flat printing (nothing carved yet):