Written on May 6, 1989 [Permalink]

May 1

About four hours. Starting on the poem ... the home stretch!

May 2

Off to Tokyo to visit the film company (again!), and the Toyo Bunko (again!), and the enogu store (again!). Re-ordered the color posi-film, this time to be shot at full frame. They won't allow use of a negative film, thus eliminating use of the new Kodak EKTAR film (super fine detail). At Matsuyoshi, picked out what seem like suitable pigments for this print. Pink seems like it will be the problem this time. He had something close ... but ¥500 for 5g put it out of reach. He recommends mixing gofun (crushed shells) with one of his reds.

Michiyo also picked up a couple of dictionaries (¥20,000!), and we zipped over to Kanda station three minutes ahead of our train. 3 hours or so in the evening.

May 3

6 hours ... and finished the sumi-ban! That makes about 71.5 hours, spread over a three week period. Tenji Tenno took 84 odd hours, spread over a year. There is a definite improvement in the carving ... lines are thinner and curves are more confident. It seems especially apparent in the poem.

Printed up 8 dry sheets of thin paper, marked in the colour areas, and pasted them onto the Ho blocks.

May 4

Started the colour blocks. Didn't track the actual hours, but worked all day.

May 5

Ditto

May 6

Back to work! English, that is. The Fussa classes started up again today, but still got in time on the blocks. After getting home, prepared 10 sheets for printing a sample run.

May 7

Finished the last colour block in the morning, and started printing. Finished at 8:30, half an hour before Japanese class. Used the nyubachi for the first time. Pink is the problem colour. Mixing red with the gofun powder just makes a candy floss type of tint...

Printing went pretty well. I had expected maybe some registration problems, but none turned up ... the blocks seem perfect! Not happy with the colours that I made, but at least something is down on paper, and she looks great! It's been about 90+ hours work, start to 'finish' (Tenji Tenno was more than a year!). Now I'm just waiting for the film again ...