Posted on July 6, 2013 [Permalink]

Continued from [Arts of Japan #6 - 1] : tracing begins

After a couple of days of 'stare at a screen' Photoshop work, the image is now traced at high resolution (600 dpi), and ready to print out for carving:

As pointed out by Serge in the comments to the previous post, our picture is one portion of the 'Papermakers' page from the book 'Shokunin Burui', illustrated by Tachibana Minko and published originally in 1770.

My friend book-dealer Shingo Ueda has a couple of copies of the book, and lent me one of them for my work. I'll keep it handy by my bench while carving, so that I can refer to it as I go along.

As the key block gets near completion it will be time to make a fairly big decision - just how far to reproduce the original while making this print. It's a big decision because the original book is not printed in colours.

Eh? But here it is ... there are clearly colours.

Hah. I said it was not printed in colours. This is an example of 'kappa-zuri' - colouring with stencils. The colours were applied by hand using a couple of different techniques; either simply painted on through a stencil mask, or blown on, to create gradations.

Whether or not I will attempt those techniques, or use a normal printing technique, I haven't yet decided ...

The thread continues in [Arts of Japan #6 - 3] : keyblock done ...

Added by: Marc Kahn on July 6, 2013

"... through a stencil mask ... blown on, to create gradations." ?

I'd like to see the YouTube demo for that...

Added by: Dave on July 6, 2013

I'd like to see the YouTube demo for that ...

Yeah, so would I, for sure. I haven't a clue just how to do it, and haven't had much luck finding any resources. That's why I'm not committing to doing it that way just yet. If the initial experiments look promising, I'll press forward, but if not, I'll cut and run.

Added by: Jacques on July 6, 2013

It's the first time I see this being done kneeling. Must have been awfully straining on the knees and back ...