Written on April 14, 1990 [Permalink]

April 10

Yamashita-san called in the morning, and asked me to drop round right away as he had some news on the cherry tree ... Michiyo and I went over, his son asked us to get in their car, and he drove us over to a woodyard in Ome City. Mr. Hagiwara, a lumber dealer there, had some information on a cherry log. The wood, from a Hokkaido-grown cherry tree, is apparently sitting in a yard in Hiroshima, and is available if I want it. He had no real details on size, etc., and after much discussion it was decided that I would simply have to go down there to look at it. He will call us with more details later...

April 11

Finished all but one of the colour blocks, so time to prepare the paper - 60 sheets. I don't have any firm ideas on colours for this print yet, and I think it's going to be awkward finding a good set of tones. I only have four nyubachi, so Michiyo took Himi-chan off to Tachikawa, where they picked up four more for me. With eight of them on hand, I will be able to select and mix all the colours for the print, and print a few complete copies before charging through all 60 sheets with possibly incorrect colours.

April 12

After the morning English class, sumi on the 60. Again, used no nori. Most of them seem OK, but the large black area of the hair is not so good on a few of them. It was also difficult getting the border inked evenly, as the edge part tends to dry out much more quickly than the inner parts of the image.

April 13

Ashida-san has been working all week on the preparation for sending out this print. The mailing labels are done, as are the Post Office payment slips, the descriptive sheets and labels, and of course, the folders themselves. As soon as I had finished the sumi-ban the other day, I ran off a hundred or so copies of the name label for her, so that she could finish the folders. This is the first time that the labels have been printed before the prints themselves, and I was a little nervous about wear and tear on the block, but when I compare the first impressions with the later ones from yesterday's printing, about 170 impressions apart, I can see no difference.

Mixed the colours, and printed three samples. She's beautiful! I made a really delicate, soft green for the kimono, going against Matsuzaki-san's recommendation of a light pink (I hope he won't be upset that I 'ignored' his advice!). The orangy-red of the 'hakama' is not quite right, and I think I'll change it in the final copies.

In the afternoon, started in on the balance of the 60 sheets, and got through all but the red before hitting the sack at about one (if it hadn't been for having two English classes, I would have been able to finish them all - 60 copies of an eight-colour print. Getting faster!).

April 14

Finished her off in the morning, using a stronger red than the sample copies - much better. Out of the 60 sheets, 51 are OK to ship. I blotched a few, and three were used as samples.

Ashida-san had left a stack of folders for me, all in customer order, and ready to receive the prints, so I cut them all into place ready for her to ship out Monday morning, the 16th. On time!

In the evening before going to bed, I prepared another batch of 60 sheets in order to try and get 100 good copies of this one run off before moving on to the next design. I'm not sure if 120 sheets will suffice to get the necessary 110 or so good copies that I want (including the freebies that go each month). With a relatively large number of colours on this one, there are correspondingly more chances to screw things up!