Gon Chunagon Sadayori

As I sit writing this little note, my calendar tells me it is a morning in May, but the weather recently has been quite unseasonal, and it actually feels like a winter morning. That's just as well though, because it helps me get in the mood for thinking about this month's poem ... an early morning winter scene on the Uji River.

This image would be much better suited to 'sumi-e' Chinese ink painting than to woodblock printmaking, so I'm glad I don't have to illustrate these poems!

My progress through this craft of printmaking is quite sporadic. It seems to me sometimes that many months pass with no improvement, and then there is a sudden jump to a better level. Over the past couple of years, I guess I have mostly been focussing on the printing - trying to mix more attractive colours, and trying to print them more smoothly. Of course, I wasn't ignoring the carving work, but I really haven't felt much improvement on that side. Recently though, something happened to turn my attention back to the carving. Late last year, I received a small package in the mail from Usui-san in Niigata, the man who makes my knife blades. Inside were a pair of beautiful blades, made from a special new kind of very expensive steel - worth about 650,000 yen per ton. I don't understand all the details of what makes this steel so good (I think he told me it contains some molybdenum), but I can certainly recognize that it makes very good knives.

So when the blade I was using became too short to use any more, I started using one of these new ones. It seemed quite good, very hard but not too brittle. I started paying more attention to the sharpening, and of course more attention to the actual carving itself. This was in March, and both this print and the print of Sukeko you received last month were carved with Usui-san's new blades. Is the carving better? Well, look at the hair, the eyes, the lips ... You tell me.

In any case, this year's focus is carving. It's been at a plateau for too long. I'm sure I can carve thinner lines, steadier lines, lines with more character. (Maybe I shouldn't tell you this. If there's no improvement, you'll be disappointed ....) Thanks Usui-san for getting me back on track, and let's see what happens ...

I hope you enjoy this print. Next month Noin Hoshi.