Written on July 9, 1989 [Permalink]

July 6

The pictures that Michiyo took came back from the photo service, and they are all unacceptable! Either the flash has washed out the images, or my face is grotesque, or something ... We'll try again in a couple of days when the class schedule permits.

One of our English students today said that his mother is interested in the prints and wanted more information. She's a member of the local print circle, so I know her slightly. I gave him a copy of the little flyer to take home. One more ...?

July 7

Yes, one more! Mrs. Soda visited today, and signed up. Her main interest is the poetry, but as she is also a print enthusiast - she couldn't resist! That's five.

Tried another roll of film today. This time we went outside, to avoid having to use the flash. I took the film to an express developer, and was disappointed to see that these too, are washed out! Is this our camera? (or just maybe the photographers?). The photo service says that they can fix it in the printing, so I ordered 20 or so copies for making flyers to send to TV programs.

Cut 10 strips of paper, and pasted on little photocopies of the book pages that I earlier arranged into groups, to see how the 10 yearly sets would look. This is actually the first time I've seen the first 10 prints all lined up together, and it gives a pretty good idea of what the first New Year's exhibition will look like (wherever it might be ...).

[ photo of this? ]

July 8

Prepared 20 sheets of paper for this weekend's printing of Dainagon Tsunenobu. I'm still not sure about good colours for this one, so 20 sheets will do. I want to see some embossing of the kimono pattern, so I'll print the purplish kimono colour first this time, before the sumi. Whether or not this will give me registration headaches when printing the other colours later ...

Picked up the photos on the way to Fussa English classes, and in the evening finished preparing the blurbs ready for sending to the TV programs.

July 9

Printed the purple kimono in the morning, and the sumi over top of it in the evening before Japanese class. There seems to be a bit of trouble getting the black to sit smoothly on top of the colour, and I think that next time I'll go back to the standard method of sumi first. The embossing effect that I wanted is not there anyway, because the kimono portion of the paper has been mashed flat by the printing process, leaving no 'fluffiness' to be embossed. This was the first try for my 'home made' sumi mixture, and it seems to be just fine. I had to thin it a bit before using, but the impression seems quite black and strong.

Went to Sekaido, and bought Torinoko paper and backing boards to make up folders. They only had enough supplies for making 15, and these will all be used for filling the outstanding orders (that sounds nice!), and for sending out the complimentary Tsunenobu copies. I'll have to try and find out where I can get this stuff wholesale.

Made up the folders, and stuck on the name labels, ready to receive the prints tomorrow (assuming that they turn out acceptably!).