Part One
In a previous set of columns running in this space
earlier this year, I outlined a simple procedure for making woodblock
prints with which beginners are able to obtain attractive results in
a surprisingly short time, using only a few inexpensive tools. In the
follow-up series starting today, I will move on from that simplified
process, and give an overview of the traditional methods used to make
the famous Ukiyo-e woodblock prints of Edo-era Japan, using as an
example the production of a woodblock printed Christmas card. Before
your eyes glaze over and you turn the page as you mumble, "Those old
workers probably had a ten-year apprenticeship. What can I possibly
do on my kitchen table?", I should repeat what I said in last
spring's columns, that attractive, satisfying results are obtainable
at even early stages of learning. If you wish to become president of
the traditional printmaker's association, you are going to have to
work at it for a while, but if your goal is simply the production of
an attractive Christmas card, you can succeed on your first
attempt.
Just what is it that distinguishes the 'classical'
technique from the process I covered earlier? It is the presence of
the outline, a recognizable image drawn in black which stands on its
own even without colouring. In the early days of Ukiyo-e printmaking,
no method was available for registering multiple colours, and prints
were all monochrome. This was followed over the years by
hand-tinting, then limited printing of one or two colours, and
eventually by full-blown multi-colour work. This historical
progression from monochrome prints to full-colour printing is
reflected today in the way that prints are produced - drawing the
'black-line' image first, carving and printing it, and then using
this 'finished' print as a guide for making woodblocks to colour the
areas delineated by the black outlines. In some prints the black
image is so strong that the colours seem almost an afterthought,
while in others the lines become submerged in masses of multiple
colour overprintings.
In the old days, all the different jobs were
performed by different people. Designers never concerned themselves
with carving, or vice versa, and each person was only responsible for
one aspect of the production process. Those of us who make prints for
pleasure nowadays of course enjoy doing everything ourselves. Perhaps
we cannot attain quite the high level of achievement attained by
those specialists of long ago, who did indeed have extended
apprenticeships, but we can certainly get good enough to produce
attractive work.
Perhaps like me, you are not particularly
artistic, and yet find yourself attracted to woodblocks. For us, the
'division of labour' situation is made to order. Make your print
using a design produced by somebody else, perhaps a friend willing to
sketch for you, or perhaps even a long dead Ukiyo-e artist, who
should have no reason to complain, as that's just the way it was done
in his day!
In this series of columns, I will pass on enough
information for you to succeed in making good prints, but even if I
was writing a 500 page book, it wouldn't be enough to tell you
everything you might possibly need to know about the printmaking
process, so just as I did last spring, I must encourage you to
contact me if you have any questions about what's going on, either
before you start, or during your explorations. I tried to learn
woodblock printmaking on my own in Canada, but gave up in frustration
and came to Japan to get a first-hand look at how it is done. Don't
you try and do it 'in solitary'! My number, 0428(22)2212, may not be
the answer to all your printmaking problems, but it might help. Let's
get started next week.
Part Two
Rather than try to provide detailed instructions
for every step in making a woodblock print, I am instead going to
describe the making of my New Year's card for the coming holiday
season (my western friends think it's a Christmas card!). I usually
get it finished in late December, but doing this column will give me
a stimulus to get it done earlier this year. 'Watching' me go through
this process, supplemented with the previous set of columns on
printmaking that appeared in this space, should give you enough
information to produce your own card.
As I pointed out last week, the design chosen
should be able to stand on its own, without any colour. For my card
this year, I will use a sketch I made from a Hiroshige print I found
in a book illustration. Before the design can be carved and printed,
it must first be somehow applied to the surface of the wood, and must
also appear there in reverse, as the printing process will produce a
mirror image of the carved block on the final paper. A simple, yet
effective way of doing this is to draw, trace or photocopy the design
onto a certain type of thin paper (minogami), and then paste this
face down on the wood. The glue makes the paper almost transparent,
and the design, which is seen from the back in reverse, is readily
visible for the knife. This paper carrying the design is known as the
'hanshita', and is the foundation of the printmaking process.
I used a photocopier to scale the image to the
size I wanted for the Christmas card, tacked a sheet of the mino
paper on top, and then traced the outlines. Thin delicate lines are
difficult for a beginner to carve, so your first print should perhaps
use heavier bold outlines. Although not absolutely necessary, the
inclusion of a border line around the print boundary helps to
visualize what you are doing and also makes the printing a bit
easier. I included the two marks that will be carved to guide the
paper during printing (see previous columns for more details). When
the hanshita is ready, it is pasted face down on the waiting
woodblock.
The choice of what type of wood to use depends on
a couple of things. For a design involving delicate lines, a wood
able to hold fine detail is necessary (usually 'yamazakura', mountain
cherry). This is expensive, and due to its hardness, is somewhat
difficult for a beginner to carve. If the lines of the hanshita are
drawn more broadly, a softer wood can be used (typically 'ho',
magnolia). This cuts very easily and smoothly, and is very easy to
print, producing a smooth impression. The most economical choice is
plywood (which I never use), but as this does not hold any detail at
all, it is only useful for colour blocks, which are typically wider,
flat areas.
I paste the hanshita down with a household glue,
being careful not to distort the sheet as it is being fixed in
position. After the hanshita is in place on the block, some of the
fibers can be carefully rubbed off the back of the paper with a damp
finger, making the image even clearer. The block is then set aside
for the glue to dry before starting to carve the design. Next week
we'll look at some of the tools needed for that important step. See
you then.
Part Three
Just like carving a sculpture in stone (It's easy!
Just chip away everything that doesn't look like a statue!), the
woodblock carving procedure is a 'waste removal' process. The
hanshita is in place on the surface of the wood, and the carving
simply removes 'everything that doesn't look like a woodblock print'
- all the 'white' areas of the design. This leaves the wood untouched
where the black lines of the drawing have 'protected' it, and it is
these areas which come into contact with the paper during the
printing stage, thus reproducing the original design. For a complex
design, this carving can take weeks of work, but once it's done, many
hundreds of copies of the original drawing can then be produced
quickly and easily. Of course, a simple design can be carved in a
much shorter time.
Carving tools are made with the same basic
technology as the famous Japanese swords - laminated from different
types of steel. The cutting part is made from a steel formulated
specifically to hold a keen edge, but as this type of metal is quite
brittle and easily broken, it must be backed up with a steel of
different carbon content, which is more springy and flexible. The
carving is a three stage process, with a different tool being used
for each stage. The work starts with the 'toh', a simple beveled,
pointed knife. It is grasped in the fist, point down, pressed into
the wood to a depth of between one and two millimeters, and then
guided along the edge of all the lines of the design. Like many
Japanese woodworking tools, it is drawn towards the body, not pushed
away. During use, it must be held at an angle to ensure that the
sides of the raised portions of the final block will be nicely
beveled. Both sides of each line in the design must be carefully
cut.
When this step is complete, the carver turns to
the round chisels ('marunomi'), and scoops out waste wood from any
wide 'white' areas. An expert carver can bring this tool right up to
the carved lines, saving a lot of time in the next step, but until
some proficiency is developed, it is best to keep at least 5mm away.
For a 'busy' design, with no wide clear areas, this tool is not
needed. If the waste areas are large, a wooden mallet is used to
drive the chisel along.
The last part of the carving is the removal of
that waste adjoining the design lines, and bounded by the 'toh' and
'marunomi' carving. This is done with the small flat chisels known as
'aisuki'. I have a series of these, ranging from about 3mm down to
0.Xmm (for very delicate designs). A mallet is never used with these
little tools, which are pushed along the lines with a gentle prying
motion, to lever up the waste wood. To avoid chipping the design
lines, the toh must sometimes be used again, to go over those places
where the previous cut seems not quite deep enough. (Refer to the
'Carving Sequence' illustration in the earlier series of
columns)
When the aisuki work is done, the accuracy of the
carving can be checked by placing a sheet of carbon paper face up on
the block, covering it with a sheet of blank paper, and rubbing with
the printing tool (baren). Perhaps some lines should be thinner, or
some more waste remains to be removed. The carving and checking
continues until this 'key block' is complete. If the final print is
to be either monochrome or hand-tinted, then one can now commence
printing, but if the print is to be multi-coloured, then this first
completed block will be used as a guide to make the colour blocks.
But that's next week's story ....
Part Four
For each different colour appearing in the final
print, a separate woodblock is needed. For my New Year's card design
I will need four: the sky (grey overcast), the water (deep blue), the
mountain (a lighter grey), and the wooden house walls (brown). The
roofs, jetty, and boat tops will be left without printing, and the
natural white colour of the paper will look like snow. Four blocks
means four new hanshita must be prepared, and for these I will use
prints made from the freshly carved key block (the black line
design).
Using the same thin mino paper I used for the
original hanshita, and a watery sumi ink, I make a number of prints
from the key block. Unlike 'normal' printing, where the paper is
placed in careful contact with the carved paper guides, the paper for
these hanshita prints is placed in such a way that it covers the
entire surface of the key block, including the paper guides. The
position of those guides must appear on the hanshita, thus allowing
matching guides to be carved on the colour blocks.
I now place four of these printed sheets on the
table in front of me, and make my decisions about what colour is to
appear where. On one sheet I 'colour in' the sky area, using a
fluorescent orange highlighter (any writing tool that produces a
vivid, clear colour is OK. The actual colour is irrelevant. The only
purpose is to mark the areas for guidance during carving.) On another
sheet, the area for the sea is marked in. The process continues until
I have one hanshita ready for each final colour. It is sometimes
useful to put the group of them together, hold them up to the light,
and check for uncoloured areas, signifying missed spots (in this
print, those uncoloured areas will represent snow).
When all is ready, these sheets are now pasted
down on fresh woodblocks (face down, as always). I will use two
blocks, using both sides. This pasting must be done very carefully,
as any distortion or stretching of the sheet will produce a colour
block that will not match the key block, and making a clear print
will become impossible. The fluorescent marker shows through the back
of the paper, and the areas to be cut are clearly visible. Cutting
proceeds in exactly the same fashion as the key block carving
described last week; first outlines with the toh, then wide waste
areas with the marunomi, and finally clean-up with the aisuki. Colour
block carving is far faster and easier than key block carving, as
there are usually no fine delicate places, but simply wide flat
areas. It took me a few days to carve my key block, but only a couple
of hours to do all four colour blocks.
Of course, the paper guides must also be carved,
following the marks printed on each hanshita. This will allow the
printing paper to be placed in the right spot to allow the colour to
fall just nicely between the black lines of the design. When carving
is basically complete, I use carbon paper as described previously to
check for errors or omitted places.
Next week we'll discuss some of the many types of
pigments available for woodblock printing, and select something
suitable for this print.
Part Five
There are a great many different types of pigments
available that are suitable for use with woodblocks. Basically any
type of coloured substance soluble in water can be used. Tube
watercolour paints, preparations made from various plant parts
(petals, roots, etc.), and pigments for Japanese traditional painting
(ganryo) are all commonly utilized. Back in the early days of colour
woodblock printing, many botanical pigments were used, and the soft
'dullness' of the prints remaining in our museums testifies to the
rapidity with which such pigments fade over time. As printing became
more developed, a wider range of mineral pigments came into use, and
the prints of Hiroshige and Hokusai show this most dramatically in
the deep blues used in sea and sky. When the Meiji era developments
in commerce introduced European dyes to Japan, printmakers went
berserk, and lost all sense of taste and discrimination in their rush
to make use of this whole new world of colours. The resultant purple
and green garish horrors are still frequently come across in used
bookstores, and have given generations a completely false view of
Japanese printer's abilities.
Most modern printmakers, including those making
copies of old works, now use the painter's pigments known as
'ganryo', which produce natural soft tones, are widely available,
easily mixed, and resistant to fading. They are made from various
mineral earths and naturally occuring substances. Some of those in
past use were highly poisonous (one of the yellows I used to use is a
50/50 mixture of sulphur and arsenic), but as these particular
formulations are no longer available to the general buyer, such
concerns are a thing of the past. The pigments you find in art supply
stores, when used with common sense (wash your hands, don't inhale
dust, etc.), are completely safe.
The pigments come in powder form, sometimes quite
lumpy. They are placed in a small mortar, covered with water, and
ground until smooth. Some of them (vermillion, indigo, the red known
as 'beni') must first be dissolved in a bit of alcohol before adding
the water, and thus most printers keep a bottle of 'sake' ready at
hand (purely for professional use, of course!). To help fix the
deeper colours and avoid 'dusting' from the surface of the finished
print, a bit of gelatin is also added to the bowl (many printers use
gum arabic), and the printer usually keeps a saucepan full of dried
crusty glue, which he heats up as needed. Gelatin is also readily
available in liquid form from art stores.
There are two basic approaches for the beginner to
take with these pigments. A wide variety of colours and tints is
available 'off the shelf', and one can simply pick the colours needed
for any particular print design. The experienced printmaker however,
keeps a much narrower range of colours on hand, and mixes his desired
tints from primaries (remember back to elementary school days -
yellow plus blue equals ...). Even though my customers are sometimes
complimentary about the colours in my prints, I am still very much a
beginner at this, and am continually astonished by the skill of the
professional printers at creating their colours.
In any case, with the colours mixed and standing
ready in their bowls, it's time to turn to the printing process and
the tools needed. Until next week ....
Part Six
The collection of equipment is standing ready for
the printing: five carved blocks (one for black outlines and four for
colours), three bowls of pigment with applicators (blue for sea,
brown for buildings, and black for outlines as well as sky and
mountain gray tones), horsehair brushes for pigments, a cup of rice
paste with applicator, a water bowl with brush, and holding center
stage, the baren - the tool used to rub the paper onto the
woodblocks. This is a circular pad formed from thousands of twisted
slivers of bamboo sheath, and covered by another sheath. It takes the
place of the printing press typical in western methods, and is
capable of being used in many ways to produce an amazing variety of
effects.
I described in a previous column the actual
process of moistening the paper before printing. I prepare a stack of
moistened paper, 10 sheets for a test/sample run (when I come to
print my actual cards, the stack will balloon to about 200 sheets,
and printing will take days of work). The paper is stored face down
inside moistened newsprint and placed where I can draw the sheets out
one by one for printing. Printing the black outlines is done first,
as these will be the guide for all that follows. There is no problem
of colours later covering up the design outlines, as the pigments are
used in quite a dilute form, and the black will show clearly through.
Although it would seem that smearing watery pigments on a piece of
wood, covering it with a piece of wet paper, and then rubbing the
paper with heavy pressure, would result in nothing but a soggy mess,
the actual result is quite different. The pigment on the surface of
the wood ends up being pressed deeply into the paper, sometimes
actually coming out the back side. One well known modern print artist
actually frames his prints with the back side showing, considering
them more attractive that way.
The procedure for printing my card is quite
simple. The block is moistened with the water brush. Some pigment is
swabbed onto the block surface with the applicator, and this is
followed by a dab of paste. These are then mixed together with the
brush and smoothed out over the entire printing surface. A sheet of
paper is withdrawn from the newsprint, placed in the carved guide
marks, and dropped in place on the wood. The baren is then rubbed
over the back of the sheet until all the pigment has been
transferred. Slip the paper back into its hiding place, and repeat
the process for the next sheet. Finish the entire stack before
changing to the next colour, which is printed in the same
fashion.
I described this procedure in a bit more detail in
the earlier columns, as well as adding some 'trouble-shooting'
information. By far and away the most important aspect of the
printing job is management of water, how much is in the paper, on the
block, in the pigment bowl, in the paste, in the brush, and in the
air. Printing is far easier in the autumn and winter, when the air is
dry, as it is far easier to add water when needed than to take it
away when things are too damp. In the humid warm months, when
printing with many colours, the paper sometimes becomes moldy before
the job is finished. This is a problem that the beginner is not
likely to encounter often ...
Next week we'll make the last stop on our
whirlwind tour of the printmaking process. Sigh .... so many things
to cover .....
Part Seven
It is difficult for me to see the woodblock making
procedure through your eyes. Does all that I have described seem
impossibly complicated and difficult? Can you really imagine yourself
making such a thing? I don't know what words to choose to try and
convince you that it actually quite possible for a beginner to create
simple, beautiful prints. You have my money-back guarantee (just how
much did this newspaper cost you, anyway?). Should you decide to give
it a try, you will be astonished at the way that the beautiful
multi-coloured images gradually grow in front of your eyes when you
are printing. I never tire of this, no matter how many times I see it
happen, and this is obviously the attraction of woodblock printmaking
for me.
A couple of times or so each month, visitors come
out to my workshop here in Hamura. Typically they are people who have
had some experience studying one form of art or another in school
'back home', but some of them have no previous training at all. They
wish to make use of the opportunity while they are in Japan to become
at least a bit familiar with the woodblock process, and somehow they
hear about me, and make their way out here. I take great pleasure in
introducing them (you?) to this work. There is no question but that
in its traditional forms, it is dying out here in Japan, and the more
people who become interested in it, the better chance there will be
of preserving the traditions.
So, how about it? How about you? I wonder, have
you ever seen a woodblock print? Really seen one? In the Edo era,
when colour woodblock prints were born, there were no electric lights
on the ceiling, and all illumination came through shoji screens, or
from paper lamps standing on the floor. Today, we have lost the
environment in which prints are best viewed. When a woodblock print
is placed on a low table in front of the diffused light from a shoji
screen, the image glows in the soft light, and seems to be somehow
alive. Turn on the overhead lights, and in their harsh vertical
radiance, it dies. We may as well be looking at a photocopy. Remove
the print from the type of environment in which it was created, and
in which it is best appreciated, and it ceases to have any meaning.
One day, when I am 'rich and famous', I'm going to build a place
where people can see what woodblocks are all about, really see them.
Not a museum, with all the mustyness of long dead things, but a
workshop where living breathing people work with their hands, a place
steeped in the traditions, and a place where those traditions can be
kept alive. And there won't be an overhead light in the place!
I guess there is not much more for me to say. I've
had fun with this 'mission impossible', trying to cover as much of
this fascinating field as possible in the short space available. I
must repeat what I said at the beginning - give me a call and come on
out and see how it works. Or what is even better, get some of the
simple cheap tools, get a slab of wood, and get going! Christmas 1992
is going to be here before you know it!
