(Note from Dave - this was written in early 2006, but I will leave it alone, even though the Scroll Project is completed. You can browse the 'Progress' links from the menu at left to see how it all turned out ...)

The Image

What you see here is an image of the painting that I have scanned from a reference text (the original is in a museum in Europe). To make my print, I will work from an oversize enlargement, tracing the outlines carefully with a brush, in what is pretty much the same procedure that would have been used back in the Edo era.

Once my key block is carved from that tracing, I will develop a breakdown of the colours, and prepare a (large) set of blocks for the printing. (An outline of the general process can be seen here in the Surimono Albums section of the woodblock.com website.)

Due to the large physical size of the print, and the large number of impressions that will be necessary, I will be working with small batches, perhaps 10~12 sheets at a time, printing the colour impressions one by one, drying the paper part-way through any number of times, to prevent it from becoming mouldy. (The print itself will be approximately 33 cm x 74 cm in size, and the finished scroll will be around 150 cm tall ...)

At the end of the long process of printing, each sheet will be thinned down from the back, and then sent to a professional for mounting as a brocade scroll. (I will not attempt that work myself.) The scrolls will then be ready for packaging and sending to the collectors, who have been (hopefully patiently!) waiting all year for them!