Written on October 21, 1992 [Permalink]

October 15

Still not finished the colour blocks, although five of the six sides are done. Again, lots of interruptions; printmaking 'class' on Saturday, Terry visiting on Sunday, and all day Tuesday at the hospital (waiting five hours to spend five minutes with the doc to discuss the X-rays from a couple of weeks ago).

Yamada-san called from Tochigi-ken, and asked to get going on his back numbers. He had talked about this when he signed up for a subscription a year ago, and is now ready. Five prints now, and five more at the end of the year (bonus ...)

Got the negatives off to the photo shop, and ordered a couple of hundred prints of the 'best' one.

October 21

Got the last colour block finished by Friday evening. On Saturday, printed up the name labels for Ashida-san, and prepared 70 sheets for printing, as well as 10 extras for colour tests. With 14 or 15 colours in this one I thought that it might take some doing to find good colours. It turned out that I only used two of the test sheets, as the very first run with the 'first guess' colours seemed pretty much acceptable. Ran the sumi Sunday night, and the colours over the next two days. I took much more care with the kento this time than with the Ise print earlier in the year, and also took much better care of the actual corner of the piece of printing paper. On the prints with many colours, the corner that fits into the kento starts to get a bit beaten up and soft after a while, but this time I made sure that I treated it softly. It stayed much firmer and was definitely easier to 'key up' properly.

When I started the Tuesday morning, I found that the last colour done on the night before (the blue) overlapped the lines on quite a number of the sheets. I hadn't noticed it during the printing the evening before, but I do remember that I had been pretty tired and had just wanted to get that colour done and then crash. (These long, long days of printing after a month off are tough on the body ...) It's not really bad, but just enough to take the crisp, clean appearance away. When I do the second run next week, I'll have to be sure to quit just a bit earlier in the evenings, before I lose all my concentration ...

I also, for the first time in this series, used some mica powder, putting it on the circular kimono 'curliques'. I didn't use much, and I don't know if anybody will notice, but I like it!

On Monday, during the printing, got a fax of the upcoming Tokyo Today magazine story. It seems basically OK, and certainly not as confused as our discussion was ... I phoned her with a couple of small corrections, and she says that it should appear in the December issue, along with a mention of the upcoming exhibition.

Spent most of today working on the little print for the upcoming culture festival in early November. I'm using a 'totoro' this year, as the 'cat bus' from that animated movie was a big hit with the kids two years ago ... The only problems are trying to get it to look decent with only three colours, and trying to carve it so that even the littlest kids can print it without getting too many blotches. When this is done, I'd better get started on the New Year's card. The people at the local Post Office want me to enter it in their competition, and the deadline is in November sometime. If I wait until after the next Hyaku-nin Isshu print, I won't make it in time ...