Onto the next thing

  With this series of waka prints completed I'm more than ready to move on to the next thing. So will now be delving back into the idea of diorama/model building to further develop my own sense of 3-dimensional space and how to display it in 2-dimensions.

                                                                Waka Prints

   Once the paper from Awagami arrived a couple of days later, I cut tem to size and dampened them to print the next day and after several consecutive days of printing I had 3 editions of prints I was extremely happy with.

These were the resulting represses of the two previously shown prints. The difference is certainly most clear in the second 'Waka 2', with the range and intensity of colour being so much more dramatic and that achieved with onky 3 layers of colour as opposed to 4, as well as the red of the sail being so much more vibrant than that of the previous in which the red faded almost completely, which was a problem as I had chosen it as the focal point of this print.

This is the third print which I printed only after learning what I did from the previous mistakes.

And this is how the pint was sent out. Each one has it's own poem card as each of the images were drawn up as previously explained in the blog from a separate waka poem, these cards came in two versions, the English text and Japanese script and on top of this they were mounted in a simple paper frame that had a description of the work on the back that read:

'The Waka series of woodblock prints from Kitchen Porter Press illustrates waka poems that describe the unique sense of space brought to Japanese print through such beautiful short-form poetry.'

                                                               The printing Process

 I think now is a good time to give an overview on how it is I print these. I also think it's quite important as it is extraordinarily different from any kind of western printmaking I have ever tried, of which I have really extensively tried a few (Screen, Collagraph, Lino and Etching). This I guess comes closest to lno but is still worlds apart in reality.

These are the brushes I use, I use them to apply the pigments to the board. This is obviously the first difference from western printing as most normally a brayer is used here (sometimes called a roller). This wouldn't work here, as the pigments are essentially a liquid, being water based, so the rubberised surface of a brayer would repel the pigment and essentially be useless. the brushes hold ink in the bristles and so careful attention has to be paid to how much pigment is being added to the brush with every press so as not to differ from the previous print. Depending on the surface area of the relief section to be printed with every colour, I found that with smaller sections it was better to add the pigment with my mixing brush straight to the application brush and with a larger area I found it easier just to add the pigment directly to the board with the mixing brush to then be massaged in with the application brush. 

Here are the baseline materials used in this style of printing. In the green tube is the substance I mentioned in a previous entry, rice paste or 'nori' in Japanese. Before sitting down and really experimenting at length with this print style I was fairly unclear on what this was really for, only knowing it was supposedly necessary. I discovered why it is necessary immediately after printing the test print. It is, without a doubt, the single most versatile and important substance I have ever used in any form of printing second only to maybe the 'Baren', seen below it. Rice paste must be applied to the block before pritning begins with water in order to prime the block, this simple substance substance (just boiled down rice I believe) spreads the moisture of the water evenly throughout the block, ensuring that no area of your woodblock is damper than the rest of it, which when working with such lightweight papers could be catastrophic to an edition. On top of that, it is then applied to the block alongside pigment with every press as the pigment mixes tend to be to thin when used on their own (this is why the colours did not pop on my previous efforts, not enough paste and the colours dry extremely pale as watercolour does.), so add 'nori' and the pigment becomes more paste like itself giving vibrancy to your tones. Finally, its last main use that I have been able to devise so far but by no means its last overall, is that it can be used as a barrier between colour and moisture. When a fade is wnted I dampen with a wet cloth the side of the relief area I want to create a fade in add pigment to the other side and 'nori' in between, then, when I brush the pigment in, it remains bold where I put colour on the block and dilutes somewhat as the brush passes over the moistened area, the paste acts as a blocker and stops the spread from continuing down through the entirety of the moistened section. This cretes the fades that are so beautiful in Ukiyo-e prints.

On the right of the rice paste is sumi ink, a carbon based ink used for calligraphy and the likes as well as traditional printing. Usually I would not have used sumi, instead I quite like using oil based inks like those used for etching as it means that the black layer then fully repels all succeeding layers of water based inks leaving the black as bold as when printed (which is helpful as I almost always start with the black), this did mean that I would have to travel in to Uni to print the black every time as I don't have the materials or the press at home to print this kind of ink and with everything going on this year, I didn't see any reason not to become fully sufficient in printing from home. The test print was the first print I decided this on with the 'Dysart' print having the black done in oil based. (I think that for future projects I may transfer back to oil based, as the colour is far more sharp at the end of printing, was just curious.)

again on the right of this, is camelia oil. the sole use of this is to rub against the surface of the 'Baren' so as not to damage the reverse side of the print as the baren abrasively rubs against the back of it to lift pigment of the block.

Below these three materials on the left, is the baren. This is most certainly the greatest tool in my arsenal. I wont explain it at length like the nori as there are western equivalents. This does differ slightly from those in the west though, as it is made of a coiled rope wrapped around a plastic cover and then, a dried bamboo leaf stretched over the rope and tied at the back. I have already had to recover one of these as the bamboo sheath that came with it, cracked on the first few uses and can tell anyone that wants to know, that job alone is almost as tricky as discovering how to print with it. I did film myself doing this but as the video ended up being 35 minutes long and the result far from perfect, I decided it wouldn't do anyone any good to sit and watch it.

On the right of these are of course tubed watercolours. I thoought it necessary to show these, as the 6 colors above are the only colours I used throughout the printing of all 'waka' prints. This is again because you have to start of with the 'correct' way, before moving on to my own way. These 6 colors are the traditional colour pallette of all Ukiyo-e prints, with every other colour achieved through the mixing of these 6. They are as follows:

Vermillion

Indigo

Prussian Blue

Karmin

Process Yellow

(Rust red is the best translation I could find so I chose..) Venetian Red

And that about does it for the base line materials, apart from I guess, the obvious one... Water.

Another photo of my baren from the other side, showing bamboo handle.

Here is the workbench I set up in my flat to print at. It's the second workspace I've made, the first had me sitting on floor and after finishing the 'Dysart' print, my back told me I needed a change. pretty basic really, an upturned laundry basket with the MDF board given to us at the start of first year laid across the top of it and a glass panel on the floor to my left and portfolio with dampened sheets inside to my right. (Still to much bending over in an ideal world but it does the trick.)

This glass panel, big as it is, was taken of an old set of garden furniture that was sitting in my parents garden unused, shortly before coming back down to Manchester, at the time wasn't sure there was much point but now know that it was a stroke of genius as I couldn't have worked without it. 

This is about as messy as I can let things get when it comes to a workspace but felt okay as I was just mixing inks for proofs at this stage, once I'm happy with the amount of paint needed for each pigment I mix enough for the edition in the small glass bowls also seen above.

This is more like it. The rice paste tube is still unnecessarily sat on top of the bench but all other elements present are necessary. diluted rice paste in clear glass bowl with undiluted sumi in bowl below, the brush sticking out from this bowl is used to apply the ink to the brush above the woodblock that then applies it to the block, a bit of greyboard cut out to protect registration marks from picking up ink, the camelia oil, baren and clean towel to rest baren on top of on the right and a desk lamp to light up my space.

Thats pretty much all I can explain with the photos I have. It is horrendously different to that of western printing so much so that it almost becomes akin to that of painting. I do think it is the nicest form of print I have ever practiced with, that can supply some of the most versatile results and has some of the strictest processes that suit my need for structure in work, very well. So, extremely happy to say that all of my previous printing efforts were not in vain...

                                                                   First Waka Prints

 I started work again the day after my test run. I wanted to continue printing with everything I had learnt from my test print still fresh in my head.

This was the next print I made, which at the time I was very happy with. The difference in quality from the previous effort, that of the test print, was immeasurable. The colours hadn't bled, the edition was almost identical with a couple of sheets used for proofs and the pigments all dried on the paper close to how I wanted them. I was happy, I finally had come close to printing with watercolour and getting the effects I knew you could with the medium that you just can't with others...

There were colour fades that actually faded, a technique that can't really be achieved in western printmaking (at least not nearly to the same extent), the colours overlapped not blotting out the colours underneath but instead building on top of one another in layers to create new colours as the transparent media of watercolour should. 

I was close with this print and I knew it, first time in 2 and a half years since experiments began in the medium that I had created something somewhat akin to a MokuHanga/ShinHanga print.

So, I thought why stop there and moved straight on to the second print in the series the day after. At the end of this however, I only felt further away. I applied everything I had learnt to this point and for some reason the print just wasn't right. This, as hard as it is to believe now looking at it, was 10 layers of colour, with 4 of those layers being in the main body of blue making up the sky and sea. That does not look like 4 layers of colour, 2 maybe if I'm lucky or 1 fairly good fade, not 4.

I left the edition to dry all the same and the next day realised my mistake. on this print as with the one of the woman in a kimono, I printed it across 3 different papers. with the edition being printed on Japanese HoSho paper, (a cheaper, thicker, and heavier weight paper than that of most Japanese edition papers) 2 proofs printed on Bunkoshi select from Awagami and 2 printed on Kozo Natural Select from Awagami (left to right in image above). Everything was better about the prints on the lighter, more expensive Awagami papers. With the colours being more pronounced, the fades more like fades and the colour build up far superior. 

Fair to say I was gutted to realise my mistake and sore at the fact I had made it just to save some money. Well, I wouldn't make this mistake again, that day I ordered a packet full of the Kozo Natural select from Awagami then took two days off waiting for it to arrive.

                                                                    Test prints

 After finishing my first print shown in the blog earlier 'An Ode to Dysart', I was happy with how the edition ended up with each print in the series being very close to the next. However, I was still aware that I wasn't fully comprehending the 'correct' use of watercolour on woodblock. It is my understanding, that before creative liberty can be taken, first a person must know the 'correct' use of any medium or material they plan to use and so, although I did get a run of 12 prints for a complete edition, I was determined to figure out the proper use of the media I have been solely experimenting with for a year or so now. I've been making woodblocks as much as I can since the beginning of this course, I always struggled with the 'correct' application of any of the process', (that is 'correct' in the eyes of the country that first mastered this print form, Japan) so I thought it was high time to sit down and figure this out for myself. It hasn't been easy, being an inherently Eastern and more specifically Japanese form of printmaking the avenues in the West to learn these processes are largely out of books, which although gives you the theory still does not help at all with practice.

 It was a daunting prospect one that, to begin with I worried would get the better of me as it had done with so many prints before. In order to get started I asked a friend for the use of one of his photographs to create a set of woodblocks from, for  test print.

In order to save the most amount of time possible on this one, instead of engraving the keyblock and it alone through the use of laser engravers I decided to map out all of my colour blocks with assistance from the high precision lasers too.

I did this by first of all making a drawing of the image, scanning that in and printing it off in duplicate, up to the number of blocks I thought I would need for the print and then highlighted the sections I wanted to keep as my relief areas on each block, I then traced all of the highlighted areas making sure to keep my registration marks noted on each tracing and then creating documents on photoshop that created a thin band around the marked relief areas for every block. By uploading these to the laser engraver, what I was left with was a full set of woodblocks that had perfect registration, that only required me to go over them with my carving tools to create much deeper and more pronounced canals for the pigments to settle in so as not to ruin the print.

 (I know at this stage, it might be hard to follow without visual cues but that's pretty much what I had to work with in starting out too...  also, I left the tracings and highlight sheets in manchester before going back to Glasgow for winter break)

These are the documents that are uploaded to the engravers, the white stays proud on the block and the black gets engraved. I then cut deeper around the relief areas so ink build up doesn't ruin the printing.

This was the first print I did this with, always handcutting all my blocks except the key. This goes back to me practicing and becoming efficient with the proper way and then using some creative freedom to adapt the process to something better suited to me. 

This was the outcome of the test series, I printed it on several papers and adapted the amounts of each material element throughout the printing process to get an idea of how watercolour and woodblock should be used to print.

Of course, I hated the end result. Was very disheartened and didn't have a single thing I felt good enough to sell. However, I did have a very good idea of where I was going wrong which was extremely valuable.

I discovered that levels of moisture throughout the paper and printing have to be carefully measured, too much and the colours would run after printing, too little, the paper wouldn't lift pigment of the block. I now had an idea of what was correct. I discovered the use of rice paste or 'nori', was invaluable (more on what this is later). also not to be shy with the pigments, to much and it can be diluted until right, too little and its hopeless trying to add more after water has been added. Also, I realised I had only been using my brushes as just that 'brushes' but they're not, they are highly specialised tools that have a huge range of uses in applying inks to blocks, acting like fountain pens with their own inkwells, pigment application has to be adapted as the brush becomes fuller with it... etc, etc.

I learnt loads and was ready to apply this knowledge to my next lot of prints the 'waka' series.