Just a few words to intoduce myself: my name is Joris and I'm an illutrator based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. I was born and raised in France so, please, excuse my poor English.
Printing techniques have always interested me, especially woodblock printing mainly because I find printing blocks -at least- as beautiful as the prints they produce.
So, here is a little carving test just to, well... give it a try.
(please don't look a the quality of the impression, I just quickly printed one piece to check the lines and it's also not printed "the Japanese way")

Carving wood isn't wat I was expecting at all. I was expecting the material to be much more "recalcitrant" but I was surprised to be able to cut with ease in all directions. I probably have to give credits to the nice pear wood and incredibly sharp tool I used (although the last is not exactly made to be used this way). Really, I had a hard time trying not to cut too deep.
The result isn't good but -to be honest- I was expecting much worse so I guess it's still encouraging. Time to go for my first print.
Cheers,
joris