March 10, 2006

The tracing work is coming along very well; I'm getting the hang of the pen tablet, and have 'programmed' some of its function keys to make the work go more smoothly. (Most used function is of course 'Undo'!).

Here's an overview of the process. This is a small piece of the base image - you can see that at this high level of magnification, things are pretty blurry:

(Some images can be clicked to popup a larger version)

Here's the same portion of the image, with the traced layers made visible:

Let me now hide the background image, so you can see the traced lines more clearly; this is how I will eventually print it out:

Some of this might be a bit confusing - both dark and light elements have all been traced with a black colour. The hanshita is not intended to 'look like' the finished print; it simply shows the location of the different design elements. So parts that will be black lines (the lower bold line), elements that will be gold or silver (the large floral shapes), and elements that will be a lighter colour 'showing through' (the dotted patterns and stylized leaf outlines) at this point all show as black.

And some parts of the design - the faint 'spider web' pattern - will not show on the hanshita. I will need to draw them later, but to include them at this point is unnecessary, and would just result in too much clutter ...