Written on August 28, 1990 [Permalink]

August 1

Colours on Semi Maru [1-4], sumi on Asatada [1-7], and 40 more sheets wet for Ono no Komachi [1-2]! A production line this week!

August 2

Colours on Asatada, but not able to finish the lot. The double impression on the large purple kimono area did me in, and I wasn't able to get the whole thing done. Cut it short and did the sumi on Ono no Komachi, not very sucessfully. It seemed to be coming out too gooey and black, and I wonder if my sumi is too thick? Just for an experiment, I ran one copy with the sumi diluted by about 100 times. It looks ridiculously thin on the paper, but I'm curious what it will look like with colours ...

No more paper wet. This will be the last one this week.

August 3

Finished the Asatada in the morning. My left arm is starting to ache (started a few days ago!). I'm not used to this continuous printing day after day. Maybe if I kept this up, I'd finally start to get some kind of muscles in there somewhere. Even with all the printing that I've done over the last few years, there's still no difference between my left and right arms.

Started in on the Komachi colours in the afternoon, but only got a couple of them done. The sumi work looks pretty crummy, and I'm running out of enthusiasm for any more of this just now. I just want to throw myself into the swimming hole down in Ozato, and then start in on that carving!

August 25

Back from our 'vacation', and time to try and update this journal which I see didn't get properly updated before we left on the 7th. The Komachi prints turned out OK, with about 30 of them being quite good. The sumi was definitely too thick. I think that some of the best prints that I made last year were the copies of Sarumaru Daiyu [1-9] that were printed when I was running out of sumi, and was thinning it like crazy to try and make it last. Now that I have lots of the stuff, I'm using too much!

I shipped the blocks for Toshiyori Ason [2-7] to Mie, along with the knives and stones. Printing equipment stayed home! Over the three weeks that we were gone, I got all the carving done, working on a very relaxed schedule, swimming with the kids at least twice a day, doing crossword puzzles, reading a couple of books that I had taken, and totally (TOTALLY!) forgetting about English classes. We got a phone call one day from TV Tokyo about the quiz program, and arranged for the shooting to be done on the 29th, after we return.

I spent a lot of time in the evenings typing the material for the newsletter into the word processor, which we had carried down with us. This stuff was written nearly half a year ago!

All in all, it was a pretty good break, especially considering the pile of work that we got done (Michiyo took reams of translation) After we got back this morning, I printed out the newsletter files, and started to make the paste-ups. I can't start carving yet, as I have no blocks left. We phoned Shimano-san, and he said that he could get us some in maybe (!) another week or so. He's known my schedule for over a year now, and having to bug him repeatedly each time is getting crazy! There's also the little matter of the TV filming next week. 'Gee, I'm sorry, but you can't film any carving today, I don't have any blocks ...'. When we pressed him, he agreed to send one block now, and the rest later.

August 26

Worked all day on the paste ups and got it finished, all but the title, which I will ask Ashida-san to do with her brush when I see her. After getting it all done, I made the mistake of asking Michiyo to read it just one more time (we have already gone over it many times looking for mistakes). She found another dozen mistakes, and I had to strip in all the corrections. I suppose we'll find yet another dozen, after the thing is printed.

60 sheets of paper wet for Toshi Yori Ason.

August 27

Sumi on the 60 sheets in the morning, trying to get a fairly soft black, not too thick. They seem OK, although the sheets are quite dry. I really lathered the water on last night, doing it three by three instead of the usual four by four, but they are still a bit too dry.

In the evening, brought the books up to date, and found out that we were in the red by about 200,000 yen in July.

August 28

Colours on 55 of the 60 (saving 5 for the TV demonstration tomorrow) with mixed results. I seem to have forgotten the right mix of paste and water needed to get a smooth impression, and the brown especially was trouble. I finally seemed to get close to it, by the time the 55 were nearly done ...

Mixing the brown was also trouble. I tried lots of combinations, but everything turned out to be too reddish. Michiyo mixed the one I finally used, adding a blue to my mixture of red, yellow and black.

A package arrived in the afternoon, two wood blocks from Shimano-san. They look pretty soft, and I would have called them colour blocks, but I'll have to use one of them for this next key block.