Fish again? Sooooo boring….
Blocks
I started working on this print during my recent trip to Japan. I was gifted a few small off-cuts of cherry-surfaced plywood from the folks at Mokuhankan (mokuhankan.com). These were only 2 3/8 inch by 7 inches, so I opted for a vertical design. Since the pieces are so small, I decided I would use the full surface, and would construct an outside kento – basically a jig to hold the blocks that incorporates registration marks. Using the full surface is sort of risky, because if the edge gets damaged, that affects the image, but I felt it was worth the risk since the dimensions were so small.
Here are the blocks as they were before I started much of the test printing.
Vivid Laboratories 
I like your examples. Could you talk about how you get the image ready? Do you use photoshop to separate the colors? What is your process?
LikeLike
Thanks for your comment! In the case of this print, I drew the line work first on a sheet of thin washi (gampi) and pasted it face down as a guide (“hanshita”) to carve the key block. I made some test prints, photographed one, and used the photo in Affinity Designer to try out color combinations, using “multiply” layers which sort of simulates combining layers of pigment. This at least helps identify what regions belong on what color block. To carve the color blocks, I used properly-registered key block prints as hanshita.
LikeLike