Look at that ... after finishing the print, and getting it into the drying boards, I got so involved with the next work that I forgot to update this RoundTable with the final series of images.

Here they are ... The next impression was one of the easiest ones on the whole design - a cascade of embers coming off the fire basket:

This next one could have come back near the beginning just as well ... the outlines go in place:

And for the final touch to the image itself, we add the smoke with a final block - touched with a grey brush from above and below, to leave a white blur in the middle ...

All that's left is to add the karazuri embossing around the border, and she'll ready to head out to the waiting collectors. (I sign and seal them after they come out of the drying boards ...)

Posted by Dave Bull at 10:45 PM | Comments (1)

Another good day of work on this print. Getting a very early start (before the other printers get here) helps a lot!

First today was the wide, faint gradation on the water ... dissolving to nothing over at the left side of the paper:

I wasn't sure how vivid to make the colour in the cartouche; too strong and it would draw the eye away from the main design. But with the bright flame right there in the center to attract attention, I think the cartouche won't interrupt:

And then the final - almost random in some places - splashes of black to highlight the birds' bodies:

That leaves us with four to go, and I think I should be able to get it done by (late) tomorrow evening ...

Posted by Dave Bull at 11:33 AM | Comments (0)

Well, look at that ... I did manage to get three colours done today too!

First was another grey tone - this one deepens various places, and transforms the colour of the main character's shirt:

The next two were quick and easy (which is why I managed to get three done today). First was a vermillion gradation to put fire in the basket:

And the next was a green tone on the two bamboo poles, one of which takes a different colour because it has the boat base tone underneath:

I'm not going to make any predictions about tomorrow's work, because there will be three girls here working on printing, and I have no idea how much time I'll have for my own stuff, or even if I'll have a bench to work at, once they all get here.

Posted by Dave Bull at 4:39 PM | Comments (2)

Here are the next three impressions on the print.

The main group of actors makes their entrance, although of course not in finished form yet:

Next up is a base tone for the boats:

And a tone for the areas of exposed skin:

There colors like this makes for a pretty full day of work. I have 120 sheets in the stack, so to get through it three times in a day I do have to keep at it pretty steadily. Not sure if I'll have the chance to get three more tomorrow ... two will be lucky.

Posted by Dave Bull at 5:06 PM | Comments (2)

So here we go ... printing on our fishing scene gets under way, starting with the key block:

This is not traditional ukiyo-e, with an outline around 'everything', but a reproduction of a painting, so at this point, there are many places in the image that remain undefined.

And the coloring begins ...

I've got 15 steps on my checklist at present; we'll see if that's actually how it works out in practice ...

Posted by Dave Bull at 6:14 PM | Comments (0)

This 'snail' is inching forward bit by bit, and a few days after getting the key block finished, the colour set is now also ready for work. One side:

... and flip them over ...

It's perhaps time to say something about the image. It's a hundred years old this year - from Taisho 2 (1913) - and is taken from a 'Famous Places in Japan' print set published by Unsodo. My series isn't supposed to be about 'places', but rather 'arts', so I ignored most of the pages in the book when perusing it for suitable material, but latched onto this one as being representative of a traditional Japanese 'art'.

We'll see the actual image itself in the next post, after I begin proofing, but perhaps you can work out what it is from the blocks (which I placed all in the same orientation, to help you puzzle it out ...)

And, in totally unrelated news, here's a little shot taken yesterday afternoon in the new workroom under construction next door. Having the new wide space available is making some interesting new activities possible, and some of you may understand what is going on here ...

Posted by Dave Bull at 4:08 PM | Comments (3)

It has been pretty cold winter here in Ome this year - and everybody has said the same thing, so it's not just 'this guy' getting old! But we've had very little snow, and the sun has shone brightly day after day, so there is little to complain about.

Things are changing though this week - here's a shot of the little plum tree just outside our front door:

Our town of Ome ('Green Plum') is earning its name over the next couple of weeks, for sure.

The downside of seeing these blossoms is that they are always accompanied by this:

That's the windshield of my neighbour's car, and the yellow powder coating it - and everything else within miles of here - is cedar pollen. I myself seem to be getting less and less affected by this as the years go by, by almost all the staff working here this week are doing so with reddened eyes and runny noses.

It'll be like this for around a month - the inevitable consequence of the post-war 'boom' in planting such trees to provide timber for house construction. But these days, the trees remain uncut, as most residential lumber is now imported from Australian or North America, and the pollen problem has become very acute.

My neighbour Yamaguchi-san came over this morning to tell me that he and his wife were heading off to stay with a relative for the next couple of weeks. It's actually that bad, that people are 'evacuating' ...

Posted by Dave Bull at 3:13 PM | Comments (5)

It was in the autumn of 1990 - just about a year after I sold my first woodblock prints - that I began publishing a newsletter about my life and work. I named it Hyakunin Issho ('A Hundred People Together') because my work at the time was structured around making the Hyakunin Isshu ('A Hundred Poems from A Hundred People') print series, and I was shooting for a total of around a hundred collectors.

After the poetry series was over I of course continued issuing it, and just kept the same name, coming to think of the 'hundred people' as simply representing my collectors in general, and it has appeared without fail four times a year since then ...

But the New York Times isn't the only publishing company wrestling with how to move their publications into the digital age, as I too have to try and figure out what to do with my newsletter ...

I have referred to Hyakunin Issho as a 'newsletter' but that's not strictly accurate. In Japanese we refer to such a publication as a 季刊誌 ('seasonal magazine') and - at least in the early years - that perhaps better describes what I was trying to do with it. Yes, it carried news about my affairs - exhibitions, new series, etc. - but it always also had plenty of 'background' information on matters related to my work, including visits to craftsmen who were supplying my tools, and other such stories.

Back when the only printing option was offset, publishing each edition was a very expensive - and very time consuming - proposition, involving much typing and re-typing, and layout with rulers wax sticks and red rubylith film.

Moving to a computer for layout saved a huge amount of time, but offset printing in such small quantities (usually around 500 copies) was still expensive, not to mention the huge costs of postage. A few years back I switched to digital (on demand) printing, which meant much less waste on unneeded copies to get the print run up, and this helped a great deal with the expenses (which come to a total of about 7,250,000 yen over the life of the publication (around $90,000)).

But at this point, it's not the money that is causing me concern or confusion; I long ago decided that the newsletter was an 'investment' worth the cost. What I'm puzzling over now - myself and the New York Times both - is what it means to run such a publication in the wired age.

• Does it still make any sense to put ink on sheets of paper, stuff them into envelopes, and send them off all around the world ...?
• Does anybody really care about news that arrives every three months - and not as part of their Facebook perusal over morning coffee?
• I wrote many years back about visiting (for one example) the paper-maker. But the current list of people receiving my newsletter has almost no overlap with the subscribers back in that day, so should I do another story about him?
• All the content of the newsletter goes online on my website [English | Japanese] at the same time that it is published on paper. Isn't this perhaps enough?
• This very blog that you are reading - hasn't it replaced the newsletter?

What I'm having the most trouble with is separating my own personal preferences (I'm an old dude who likes to read stuff on paper) and modern practical realities (it's all 'instant' and on a screen). I do occasionally get emails of this sort: "As usual, your newsletter goes great with a cup a java and some sun streaming in a window," but that's simply to be expected from a particular reader of an age and temperament similar to my own.

So I would very much appreciate some feedback on this please - particularly from any long-time readers who might be seeing this post. Let me know your own thoughts on what the newsletter means for you, and how you think it should be handled from here on in ...

Posted by Dave Bull at 6:24 PM | Comments (10)

A few years back, I published two eBooks on my work: 'David's Choice, Volume 1', a small multi-media visit to my print collection, and 'Your First Print', a beginner's guide to my printmaking process. To help make the books more interesting and useful to readers, I also set up an accompanying web forum where anybody could post comments and questions about any of the material in the books.

Slowly and steadily the number of posts on the forum has grown, and it is turning into quite a nice resource! It is well indexed by Google and other search engines, and is now showing up on searches related to the 'how to' of woodblock printmaking.

But I'm certainly glad that not all of the thousands of viewers end up asking questions!

Posted by Dave Bull at 7:21 AM | Comments (0)