It’s a roll of 10 sheets of the “student” 100% kozo (mulberry) paper from Kitaro. The top blue line says, 越前手漉き和紙、aka “Echizen tesuki washi”, or Echizen handmade Japanese paper. I’m looking forward to trying it out! It’s quite inexpensive for 100% mulberry paper. I’m not sure what makes it student grade – imperfections, maybe? I won’t really know until I plan some prints, take some out, and slice up a sheet for testing. From first inspection, it seems nice and sturdy, so hopefully the sizing is adequate. Who knows, maybe this paper will be worth more than testing material?
(Image credit to my friend Lou Hurlbut for the little print you can see on the wall!)
Planning new prints. Ahem. I’ve been stuck in that stage for awhile since I returned from Japan. I’ve got two ideas going – I will hint at them in cartoon form. These are purposefully low-res images because the designs are not final and a hi-res digital image just looks quite fake.
This one is taking lots of time to develop and I may not ever get there! But I love the idea.
This one is close! Obviously clouds are a recurring theme in these ideas. This was a real cloud that I saw in Junction, Texas. We wanted rain sooo bad! It was raining over there, 80 miles away where the cloud was, but not where we were. As the sun set, the colors just got more and more dramatic.
I had planned to print last night, applying maybe the last impression – the dark lines with sumi – on the fireflies, but when I looked at the block, I saw that some lines were missing. Blasted shina plywood again! You can see pretty clearly below that I filled in some places where the top ply went missing. Before printing, I’ll need to let the glue cure and then trim the patches to match the lines they are patching.
I’ve learned before that I need to let the glue cure really well before trying to use a block I’ve repaired this way. The next time I’ll have a chunk of time for printing is Thursday. There are 25 sheets in my stack – 19 of them on the Echizen Kozo – and it has been taking me about 3 hours to get through the stack, clean up my tools, and get the paper packed for the freezer, and I have that kind of time only 4 days a week.
I hope everyone is staying safe out there, and thanks for reading!
I’m done with the first series of prints! I started out with 14 on Shin Torinoko (sized, Manila linen and acid free pine pulp, machine made) and 9 on Echizen Kozo (sized, kozo with “a small % of acid free pulp”, handmade) and of course I had some attrition. Only one bone-headed move printing a sheet 180 degrees from the correct angle; some places where the paper contacted a part of the block that was too high; and a few “too crude” impressions with some movement or just too much pigment and goo. I think I have ended up with 10 + 6 prints I can be happy with (perhaps after cleaning up a few spots around the edge that I wish were not there). Aside from the bone-headedness, I can solve most of the errors by deepening my carving.
The Shin Torinoko held up much better under the pressure and friction of the baren than the Echizen Kozo did. I mostly didn’t use protecting sheets (baking parchment) until the end, because I have found that it’s easier to feel what is going on without them. Consequently there were places on the handmade paper that had a lot of wear.
Back-side condition of one of the Echizen Kozo prints
Echizen Kozo on the left, Shin Torinoko on the right.
The Shin Torinoko held up comparatively well. It is just as thick and cushy to print on, but I guess some are suspicious of its pulp content and fear it won’t last as long. Here is a square-on shot of both back-sides, handmade paper on the left:
So you probably want to see what the final prints look like. First, here are a few of the Shin Torinoko prints, followed by a set of their brothers on handmade, Echizen Kozo paper. I was aiming for uniformity, and I think the bottom row was more successful than the top.
…. and a few details:
The left is on the handmade paper, and the right is on the machine-made. Both reveal a problem in my printing: I printed the key block last, and I used some pretty serious pressure in the earliest impressions — like the first one, in yellow. See how the yellow intrudes on the bottom line of the steak, and interrupts the upper right corner? This is not because there is a flaw in the key block — it’s because the paper is soft and squishy, and the yellow compressed it so much that the key block can’t get a complete impression! There are signs of this on the left, too, in the unevenness of the outline of the leg, and in the intrusion of the deep blue green into the mostly vertical outline of the rightmost stone. I almost want to blame the paper — I feel like strong pressure is needed to get a smooth, complete impression, so maybe a paper that is less yielding would give a better result.
Here are the impressions, in order. There are 6 blocks total:
Yellow Ochre (block 1)
Permanent red deep (block 2)
Emerald green (block 2)
Dark gray 1 (dilute sumi) (block 3)
Light gray (neutral tint) (block 4)
Cobalt turquoise (block 5)
Brown + sumi + a little permanent red on the waterline and the rocks immediately above and their reflection (block 5)
Another round of dark gray (dilute sumi) on the handmade paper and some of the others, because they were too pale (block 3)
Olive green (bokashi on the water, complete impression on vegetation) (block 2)
Key block (block 6)
Mystery pale brown bokashi on top and bottom (block 4)
I want to enter this print in the upcoming Awagami Mini Print 2019 Exhibition, so now I need to do it all again on A4 paper.
Vivid Laboratories 