Written on July 27, 1990 [Permalink]

July 20~23

The kids are now at home for the summer holidays, so it's off to the outdoor pool every day, and then home for carving! Finished the key block for Atsutada [2-6] by Monday afternoon - almost a whole month ahead of schedule.

Kheeseng phoned to say that he was moving back to Thailand, and would be happy with his now completed set... With his 'resignation' that leaves us now standing at just about 28 subscribers (depending on whether of not you count the people catching up with last year's set as one or two ...). Aside from the possible TV, there's nothing on tap.

July 24

Finished the colour blocks, which are just a couple of small areas carved on the back of the sumi ban. This is the first print in the series so far which has all been done on one piece of wood. If I didn't have English preparation in the morning, I'd make some paper wet tonight, and get printing.

July 25

60 sheets of paper wet, after the last class at 11:00.

July 26

Printed the 60 in the afternoon break between classes. It's a black kimono again, and I can't seem to get it as smooth and black as I did just after Matsuzaki-san gave his advice last month. Maybe I'm not making the paper quite wet enough? At least they are reasonably smooth impressions, if not quite as deep as I would like.

July 27

Colours on the 60, and not without problems. I wanted to get away from the same selection of colours that I've been using for all these prints. I don't know if the customers are getting bored, but I am! I picked up some new pigments from Matsuyoshi when I was on my way to Miyuki's Yamaha class last week, and decided to try a blue for the hakama. I don't know why though, that whenever I try using something other than the standard yellows, browns, and reds - it looks 'funny' , like a little kid coloured it in. I had the same problem last month with the purple of Hitomaro's kimono sleeves, and ended up using a basic dull colour. Some of the print illustrations I have in books show an amazing mix of colours, and yet still look 'OK'. Is this simply a lack of objectivity concerning my own work?

In any case, I finally chose a dull blue, with a sandy colour for the pattern circles. I think it looks 'funny', but went ahead and printed the batch anyway. We'll see later if it has cost me 60 sheets.

A package came in the mail today the newsletter stuff from the Moritas in Osaka. No, it's not finished - they are returning it so that I can do it myself on our wordpro. They've had it since early spring, and haven't even started it. I asked them a few weeks ago to return it, and here it is. I'll take the word processor down to Mie Prefecture when we go on the 7th, and do it then. I had wanted to have the thing properly typeset, but at least this way it'll get done!