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Here's a close-up of the print. The overall balance isn't quite right yet - the dragon himself needs to be more 'dirty', his outlines need to be darker, some of the edge gradations need to be cut back and softened a bit, and the gold-coloured spots on his skin need to be brought out more, but we're within striking distance ...

So, with now only two days left before the exhibition, I don't have a chance to make too many copies of this one just yet (9 people have sent in pre-release orders, and they've been waiting so patiently!), but I'll get a small pile of paper wet tonight, and see if I can get a small batch done before the weekend ...

Then, it'll be time to get them put into the Mokuhankan catalogue!

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And here's a zoom-in on one of the poet's names (scale lines are millimeters):

Not long to go on this print now ... just a couple of colour blocks ...

This thread continues in Hokkei Dragon (6) ...

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The package with the new set of blocks arrived from Mike today!

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Continued from Aspen Grove (8) | Starting point of the thread is here

The package with the new set of blocks arrived from Mike today!

They look very good ... still completely flat, not the tiniest warp or unevenness of any kind.

Here's a focus on one of them ... click it for a monster enlargement ...

I'll call Numabe-san this evening, so see what his schedule is like. He had mentioned earlier having time available in the second week of October, but I suspect that I've missed that 'window'; we'll just have to see what he says ...

This thread continues in Aspen Grove (10) ...

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The carving has been coming along, very slowly bit by bit, sandwiched between work on the scroll and the colouring books ...

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Continued from Hokkei Dragon (3)

The carving has been coming along, very slowly bit by bit, sandwiched between work on the scroll and the colouring books ... Here's a shot of the completed key block. I forgot to snap it when it was fresh and clean; it has just been brushed with sumi to make the kyogo - the sheets to transfer the pattern to the colour blocks. (click to popup a larger image in another window)

I'm thinking that I'll probably need three pieces of wood (six faces) for this print; there aren't a lot of colours in it. Here are four of the kyogo impressions, with the yellow and red marks on them indicating areas that I'll be preserving (or cutting away). The third one from the left appears reversed, because it has already been pasted down onto a fresh piece of wood.

Here are a couple of close-up shots of the next block being carved. This will be the one that prints the metal powder (for highlights on the dragon's body, and the poem). I've already done the rough clearing, leaving just the areas containing the design elements.

And here are some of the zillion little dots of those highlights. It doesn't really matter what shape each one is, as long as they are approximately the correct size, but I like to kind of get them to look as close to the original as possible. You can see here that they are mostly carved quickly, into a sort of triangular shape. Later, after the first proof sheets show the appearance, I'll return to this block and knock off some of the sharper points, to give the dots a more rounded appearance ...

This thread continues in Hokkei Dragon (5) ...

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After the previous set of blocks turned out to be unprintable, we decided to put them aside and cut another set

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Continued from Aspen Grove (7) | Starting point of the thread is here

Apologies to those who have been following this thread - trying to follow this thread! - in frustration. We've got the train back on track now ...

After the previous set of blocks turned out to be unprintable, we decided to put them aside and cut another set, this time using cherry-faced plywood from Woodlike Matsumura here in Tokyo. This is the wood that I use for most of my own printmaking work; well-dried 5mm sheets of cherry, bonded under pressure to a heavy plywood core, and then surfaced with planing and then under-water sanding to a very high polish.

Mike was willing to use these, but requested that the final sanding step be omitted, as he wanted to use his own carving machine to cut a guaranteed level surface on the wood before cutting the designs.

So I ordered the wood ... It arrived in late August, and I sent them over to Mike (I don't even want to think about how much the final bill for air freight is going to be for all these shipments back and forth!)

So let's pick up the thread with emails ...

From: Mike  |  Date: September 21, 2006

Aspen Grove block 1 is carved and side two (block 2) is carving now – at this rate, I’ll be done by the end of this week, or maybe early next… Currently calculating toolpaths for 7th block – when it’s done, only one to go! LONG day today, and I’m VERY dirty and dusty! Going home now to shower, eat, and sleep – back at it in the morning to finish #2 and move on to begin carving #3…

(Dave replied during a Skype conversation ... )

From: Mike  |  Date: September 22, 2006

I’ve completed carving of blocks 1 through 3 and am currently surfacing block 4 (2nd side of 2nd block). I’ve been planing off about 15 thousandths of an inch from the surface in order to make the blocks flat and parallel (they seem to be out by about 1/100th inch as they come from Matsumura – that means the faces are non-parallel by that amount)… Then I sand smooth to remove machining marks with 220 grit and finish with 400 grit to a dull shine.

I’m using the same bitmap contours as with block set #3 which are the ones I sent you last spring – those bitmaps look very good to me still. But I’ve vectorized them with more precision than before and I’ve redone all the toolpathing using a much closer tolerance (now about 1/1000th inch tolerance) in order to try to carve more of the fine detail than before – this means it took about twice as long (24 hours) to calculate the toolpaths, and is taking about three times longer to machine, but from the way the first three blocks look, it’s worth it – these appear to me to be a substantial improvement over the previous set (at least according to my memory)!

The 45 degree vbit is (so far) providing much greater precision than the 60 or 90 degree vbits I’ve used in other carving. This is like… DUH! Each axis of my machine ‘moves’ in increments of about .002 inch. I previously carved the blocks about .07 inches deep (35 ‘clicks’ vertically) using a 90 degree vbit on the first (plywood) blocks, so the narrowest mark I could theoretically make should be about .004 inches and at .07 inches deep the diameter would be .14. With a 60 degree vbit, the narrowest mark I can make would be about .0023 inches and at .7 inches deep, the diameter would be about .08 – this is what I used for on the maple and cherry sets – you have the cherry set carved this way.

This week I’m carving the Woodlike Matsumura blocks .1 inches deep (50 ‘clicks’ vertical instead of 35 at .07) and I’m using a 45 degree vbit. So the narrowest mark I can make is theoretically about .0017 inch and at the full .1 inch depth the cut is only .083 inches in diameter, so it’s clear why these are turning out better all the way around – about 5 times greater precision, assuming, of course, that the steeper tiny pyramids survive machining and that I accurately zero the vertical axis exactly at the surface of the block…

4.5 million lines of code to carve these blocks and about 3500 feet of actual carving, so I still have a LOT of hours of machining ahead of me at this point – might be finished closer to the END of next week it now appears.

From: Dave  |  Date: September 23, 2006

... but from the way the first three blocks look, it’s worth it – these appear to me to be a substantial improvement over the previous set (at least according to my memory)!

OK ... hope you keep the bit sharp! That steeper angle might mean more mountain tops getting chipped off ...

You said the other day:

I’m VERY dirty and dusty!

How much actual 'hands on' do you have to do with all this? And how much input does the toolpathing process need from you (decisions, etc.)? People have been curious where the 'line' between you and the machine is falling ... how much is 'automatic', and how much is 'artistic' ...

From: Mike  |  Date: September 24, 2006

The 'line' between me and the machine falls mainly at the tips of my fingers, I suppose. I've described this before, I think, so you already know all this -- but again, briefly:

I photographed the Aspen Grove about 50 yards from my Mom and Dad's home in Aspen, Colorado. I manipulated the image using PhotoShop, both rotating and distorting it in order to make a 10x15 inch (oban) image which I liked. Then I scaled it up to 600 dpi and began adjusting the tonal curve until the image contained roughly equal areas of tone while maintaining an overall tonality which appealed to me. Then I began to enormously simplify the image. First I converted it from color to grayscale, then eliminated areas too small to carve while still maintaining sharpness and detail (something of a trick actually). After many hours of back and forth adjustment and simplification, I had only nine values in the image (white, and eight evenly stepped grays going to black), each covering roughly the same area (square inches) of the image and the smallest piece of each tone was only a bit smaller than I might actually be able to carve. I added kento registration and masked borders for carving so the bitmapped image became a bit larger than the blocks I would carve. Then I built the contours to be carved for each block (I chose this particular image in part because I could avoid having to include paper support areas which could complicate instructions to the printer and make it easier for mistakes to occur in printing).

I output the contours for each block to a 1-bit bitmap (black and white) and vectorized the perimeter of each black contour -- in effect, each area to be carved away was outlined with vectors. At 600 dpi and using a 1.2 pixel 'average' for the vector conversion, and eliminating any contours of less than 6 pixels (.01 inch), the outline of each area to be carved was contained in a dxf file. Then I loaded the dxf vector information into my toolpathing software, defined the router bits I would use during machining (their geometry, including shape, diameter, inches per second, offset for clearing strategy, and similar information) in this instance, a 45 degree V-bit and a 1/8 inch upspiral end mill. Then I computed the toolpatsh -- using the v-bit to engrave the outline of each contour (calculating the Z-axis height of the v-bit in order to accomplish very narrow lines) and used the v-bit to clear interior areas too narrow for the eighth inch end-mill to reach. Larger areas were toolpathed for clearing with the eighth inch end-mill. Then I saved the toolpath instructions as text files in a format my CNC machine can interpret. Although the toolpath files contain some instructions to set the speed of tool movement and other parameters, and many instructions to lift the bit out of the block and 'jog' to a new location without cutting, more than 99 percent of the toolpath file instructions are "move in three dimensions from the current location to x,y,z where x y and z are the measurement in inches from 'zero', a point about six inches above the bed of the machine at a corner. All these millions of lines of instruction are generated automatically from the parameters I enter and using the vectors I built from the original image.

Then I decide how to mount the block onto the bed of the machine. In the case of the current block, I use vacuum. I built a vacuum plenum over my machine bed -- it's a 49x96x1 inch sheet of light weight MDF and I machined away deep grooves from the bottom side so it is 'waffled' and I screwed it down to the bed of my machine and caulked the sides all around so they are air-tight. I have a Fein shop-vac attached under the bed to provide about 1 pound per square inch of suction. I cut 10 3/4 x 16 inch (the size of the blocks you provided me) hole out of a sheet of 4x8x1/4" corrugated plastic sheet, mounted the sheet onto the vacuum plenum and used masking tape to seal the edges. Then I placed a block into the hole I'd cut in the plastic, turned on the vacuum, and taped around the edges of the block onto the plastic to effect a tight seal. So the block is held down by about 172 pounds of air -- enough to keep it from moving around during machining.

Then, since the two cherry-faced sides of the block were not completely parallel or flat when they arrived, I used a 1/4 inch end-mill to plane about 15 hundredths of an inch from the surface of the block (I do this with a 'cut rectangle' command to my machine giving parameters for how deep to cut, how long and wide, the step size (tenth of an inch for these) and that it's to begin at the outside and move in until the whole surface has been machined.

Then I sand the freshly machined surface (already quite smooth, actually), first with 220 grit and then with 400 grit. The whole setting the block, zeroing the tool, machining flat, and sanding process takes about 30 minutes per side.

Then I install a 45 degree vbit into the router, zero the vbit to the surface of the block, check the zero carefully by machining small lines at the edges until I'm satisfied with the accuracy of the setup, load the toolpath instruction file and run it. I watch for a few minutes to make sure all appears to be 'right', then I run upstairs (and write this email) and do other stuff, usually checking on progress every hour or so until the carving has completed (for these blocks probably an average of 7 or 8 hours of v-bit carving). When the v-bit movement has been completed, I lightly sand the surface with 400 grit to clear any burrs. Then I remove the v-bit and install an eighth inch end-mill, zero it to the surface of the block (doesn't require as much precision as it's only clearing and cutting kento), then load and run the toolpath for that tool and block. On these blocks that's only 30 minutes to an hour to complete.

Then I blow the dust and chips from the carved surface, turn off the vacuum, remove the tape and either flip the block to begin the other side or (if this IS the other side) put in a new block and repeat until done.

As I think I've mentioned before -- the ink and paper have NO idea and receive NO information about what sort of tool might have removed the portions of the block which don't print, so there's really NO way to determine by looking at the print that the block was carved by router, by hand, by fingernail, teeth, or whatever! The only evidence of the block is the ink transferred from the UNCARVED surfaces, right?

OK, so where's the 'line' between me and the machine? I don't really believe there IS any such line. The machine is an extension of myself in exactly the way ANY tool is an extension of oneself. Mind goes, everything else follows, right?

* * *

Minor disaster yesterday... My router shot craps mid-block-4... Picked up another (and dropped $350) this morning and am now re-carving #4 which should turn out just fine.

This thread continues in Aspen Grove (9) ...

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... get a few of these ready to ship!

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Continued from Hilo Bay [13] | Starting point of the thread is here

Numabe-san returned the prints to me in pretty good condition; I have seen packages of prints prepared by printers that were carelessly dried, all warped, and thus requiring a complete re-moistening and flattening, but these are fine.

Once they are embossed and sealed, they'll be ready to fly!

If I had really been on top of things, I would have had the embossing slugs prepared in advance, and given to Numabe-san to include with the printing job, but I didn't get them ready in time, so I'll be doing that job myself now.

That's no problem, and actually, it gives me one more control step - I'll check each print carefully as I seal it.

The first embossment is at the bottom of the right margin, and says "Hori: Buru / Suri: Numabe" (in Japanese).

I didn't carve this lettering, but prepared a digital master, and sent it out for etching on zinc:

I just stuck it down a piece of wood with double-sided tape, cut a quick registration mark on the plank, and rubbed the paper over the lettering with my baren.

Because the title of the print is only visible in Japanese, I feel it needs an English title too, so I prepared a long thin strip of lettering for the bottom, reading "Morning Light at Hilo Bay, Gary Luedtke". That's actually not what this particular slug reads, which it why I was a bit late getting them ready ...

I can't get my camera to fit it all in without blurring, so here's just the right-hand end of the embossment:

Gary had earlier expressed the feeling that this stuff would detract from the image, but actually, it's almost invisible.

Finally, the Mokuhankan seal goes down in the very right corner - this also is pretty much invisible unless you put a really raking light onto it, like this:

Then with that work done, time to get some of the packaging parts out of the closet, and get a few of these ready to ship!

'Shrink' back down ... | Discussion [4]

Here it is on his proofing stand together with Mike's original ...

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Continued from Aspen Grove (6) | Starting point of the thread is here

Hard to believe it's been four months now since Mike and I first tossed around the idea for doing this print; I had expected it to be 'done' in a couple of weeks!

Yesterday I went down to Numabe's workroom with two things in mind - to pick up the completed Hilo Bay prints, and to work with him on Aspen Grove proofing for the day. In baseball terms, I did fine ... :-(

The Hilo Bay prints were fine, and there wasn't much for us to spend time on with them, so we got right to the proofing. Numabe had spent the previous day on it, getting familiar with the blocks, going over the proofs and colour separations that I gave him, and trying a few samples.

By the time I got there, he had one nearly done; here it is on his proofing stand together with Mike's original (Mike on top): (note: all the photos taken during this session are a bit schmucked up - I found out when I got home that the camera had retained an ISO setting that I had used the night before when trying to take pictures of fireflies!)

As you can see, Numabe has pretty much retained the 'look and feel' of Mike's work in his own proof. At first glance, it looks like we are on our way!

But ... here's a zoom in:

Mike's is clean and sharp; Numabe's is completely 'fuzzy'. And, you can see a wide strip of blue tone at the top of his, where one of the blocks is sticking up beyond the others.

The fuzzyness is coming from misregistration. Now these blocks - right down to the registration marks - are cut by machine directly from the image files, so there are no lines 'out of place' at all.

But he found - no matter how he tried to move the registration marks up or down - that he just couldn't get all parts of the image to line up properly. Here's a closeup:

You can see the parts that should be lining up ... they are off by a couple of millimiters easily. Now usually, that's no problem - you trim or adjust the registration mark to move the paper into the proper alignment.

Unfortunately, this isn't a misalignment of the registration mark, but a distortion across the entire face of the block ... of all the blocks! And something else in that picture shows us what it is; look at the image right at the '270' line - there is a straight line across the print, blue on the bottom, white on the top.

This is one of the joints; one of the places where the laminations meet. Just how bad is it? Here's a rubbing from one of the blocks:

The laminated strips have distorted in two ways - in thickness, and in width. Each one now sticks up, or sinks below, the level of its neighbour, and there is no way that a proper impression can be taken from them.

And as for width, they have expanded in what seems to be pretty much a random fashion, some more than others. And because half of the blocks (1, 3, 5, 7) are in one orientation, and the other four in the opposite orientation, there is no hope whatsoever of getting things lined up.

Numabe looked at me, and asked whether he should go ahead and try it ... but look back again at that proof of his - the horizontal bands are clearly visible across the face of the image. This one's a goner ...

So, there really isn't any choice on this; the wood available to Mike over there is just not suitable for this kind of work. Monday morning I'll call up Matsumura-san, order a set of blank cherry blocks, and then send them across to Mike, where he'll have to 'reload' the image files and fire up his cutter again.

It'll take a bit of time, but I think that's all - the image has pretty much been 'solved', both at Mike's end, and here on the proofing desk. When the good blocks arrive, we can pick up where we've left off, run up a few variant proofs, decide which one (or ones) to use, and run the edition. Numabe-san is interested in doing this one, as it's completely different from anything else he's done before.

Apologies to the collectors who are waiting for this print; I'll post a timetable here shortly, after talking to Matsumura-san and Mike and finding out what their schedules look like.

This thread continues in Aspen Grove (8) ...

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Mokuhankan's first 'real' print ... as good as it gets!

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Continued from Hilo Bay [12] | Starting point of the thread is here

Getting on for midnight here in Tokyo ... just back a short time ago from a long day downtown, working with Numabe-san. Where to start ... ??

At the beginning, I guess! When I arrived at the workroom, he had the finished batch of prints laid out on a table waiting for me. How are they? In a word ...

... fantastic!

There is no good light here just now, so there is no point trying to post a photo here in this entry. Tomorrow morning I'll set up the lights and stuff downstairs, take a proper photo, and update the Mokuhankan catalogue page with the real print image [... done ...].

He has got the sky beautifully smooth and clean, and the sea a rich deep but without being over-saturated. The islands have a nice maroon tinge, like the original master copy ... The three distant peaks are now an important part of the image, instead of being 'hidden' away, as in my proof (I had been wishing they would just go away!). And the 'morning glow' across the print has come out so well ...

The registration is now perfect. My copies had been well registered, but his first proofs weren't, as he missed the thin light-coloured strip of water in the distance, opting instead for a blurred shoreline. It's now done properly ...

Honestly speaking, I don't think there are any flaws at all. Maybe Gary will manage to find something (as he should, I guess ...), but for the rest of us mortals, this is as good as it gets!

Tomorrow, I'll put the embossments on a couple of sample copies (carver/printer; print title; Mokuhankan seal), and will then just sit and look at it for a while ... Mokuhankan's first 'real' print!

So ... so much for the print itself; what about the business stuff? This one took a long time to print, and based on our previous agreement of a payment of his standard fee of 20,000 per day, where do we stand, and how much has it all cost me?

He had the prints prepared for me in three stacks, and a proposal on the table. One small stack - pushed aside - had the proof copies and print waste; a half-dozen sheets that will be tossed in the bottom drawer. The rest he split into two stacks: the 60 copies that I had asked for in one pile, and 23 more that he had made in another (identical prints).

He said it took him basically 13 days to produce the 83 copies once printing proper started, so doing the math gives us a printer's cost of 3,200 yen per sheet. I owe him 13 printing days + 3 proofing days, all @ 20,000 yen, for a total of 320,000 yen.

Now I had only asked for 60 copies to be printed, but both he and I know that adding another 20 or so sheets to the pile doesn't add 1/3 more time, because when playing around with such a small quantity as this, so much time is spent in block prep/brush washing/etc. etc. So although it might have taken, say, 10~11 days to do the 60 copies, he could do 80 in 13 days (impossible to calculate this number exactly of course, but anyway, somewhere around there ...)

So he suggested that in lieu of three of the printing days (around 1/4 of the edition printing time), he would keep those 23 copies. I would thus pay for only ten days @ 20,000 yen, plus 50,000 for a similarly discounted share of the proofing for a total of 250,000 yen. The benefit for me is that my cost per sheet is reduced somewhat. The benefit for him is that he now has a nice little pile of prints that represent a potential revenue for him. (Part of the 'back story' here is that this is also an attempt to try and help him recoup the loss of working time he suffered due to my rejection of his first print job for me a few months back ...)

But letting him 'take' prints like this ignores a couple of things: I'm going to pay Gary a royalty, and have to pay it on the entire batch of course, not just the 60 copies that I am going to sell, and secondly, I supplied the paper and blocks for those 23 copies, and should be compensated for those.

He was ready for this of course, but without knowing how much the royalty is, hadn't been able to come up with a number. As far as royalty, I had previously talked about this with the designers using 1/2 the raw printer's fee as a starting point for discussion. That would mean 1,600 yen in this case. So ... at the least he has to compensate me 1,600 + 175 for paper ... just over 40,000 yen for the batch. Knocking this off the 250,000 I owe him brings that down to 210,000 yen.

Now ... turning around to look the other way, I have to figure out how much to pay Gary ... or, if he will take it 'in prints' - as we earlier discussed - how many copies. Royalty for 83 prints @ 1,600 comes to 132,800 yen, but just how many prints this represents is difficult to figure out. Before I can do that, I must now try and decide what these things are actually going to sell for, and to do that I have to add up my costs, but before I can come up with a cost per sheet, I have to know how many sheets I will have on hand after all the expenses are covered ...

Confused? So am I ... Let's get out my original spreadsheet and look at what I have been trying to 'target' for a print like this.

Given a retail price (on the website) of 100%, I have been thinking of that as breaking into three parts: 40% - discount to dealers (people buying in quantity for resale), 40% - cost of production (from raw paper right through packaging), 20% - left for Mokuhankan.

20% doesn't seem like much of a margin, and if all sales were wholesale, it wouldn't work, but I'm thinking that it will be a retail/wholesale mix, so should work out at something better than 20%.

So, let's start adding things up:

• printer: 3,200 yen
• carver: 1,600
• designer: 1,600
• paper: 175
• packaging: 125

.. for a cost of production of 6,700 yen. Now if that represents 40%, then the retail price should be 16,750 yen. If this print were o-ban size, I think that would be a great deal, but it's not - it's much smaller than that. 16,000 yen is too much, and I think 15,000 - where I 'guesstimated' it to fall, is as much as I can honestly ask for it.

The dealer price for this would thus be 9,000 yen, so is that the way to calculate how many sheets Gary would get? A royalty of 132,800 yen paid in 'wholesale' prints would be 15 copies. If Gary sells these to dealers at that wholesale price, he would end up (eventually) with his normal royalty (having had to work extra for it!); if he sells them retail, he will end up with a bit more in his pocket, but for that he would have to work even harder to get it ...

So I think everybody might be basically happy at this point: Gary has a beautiful print now out in circulation, as well as a (small) pile for himself; Numabe-san has had work for two weeks, as well as (I assume) the satisfaction and pleasure from doing good work. He also has a 'bonus' in that stack of prints, which actually is (potentially) a very nice bonus indeed, if he can manage to sell some of them. (And if you are perhaps thinking that he's coming out of this in pretty good condition, please remember that I think he has 'bent' that total of '13' days downward somewhat ... it was June 19th he started, it's now July 8th, and this isn't the kind of work you can just lay aside for a couple of days while you do something else ...)

And publisher Dave? Well, next week when I pay Numabe, I'll be 'out' 210,000 yen (not quite sure just yet where that's coming from ...), but in return I'll have 45 prints left in stock, which should - if the market will cooperate - gradually help support my activities as they fly away one-by-one.

And as for 'carver' Dave, who supposedly got 1,600 per sheet as a carver's royalty ... Well, that money doesn't seem to actually exist - at least I can't find it anywhere - but anyway ... the blocks are here, and still in very nice condition, so maybe one day ...

Now ... what about the rest of today's activity ... Proofing work on Aspen Grove ... Mike, are you reading this? "Kansas City ... we . have . a . problem . "

But it's too late tonight to start that story ... it'll have to wait until the morning ...

The thread continues in Hilo Bay [14] ...

'Shrink' back down ... | Discussion [1]

Numabe-san gets to work on the proofing ...

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Continued from Hilo Bay [11] | Starting point of the thread is here

Quickie update ... Had a call from Numabe-san this evening. I have been waiting for him to let me know he was ready to start proofing, but the call was different ... he says he's 'pretty much finished' proofing, and now needs my input. Grrrr!!

I can understand actually; if I were in his position I would much rather work it out by myself without some guy standing there constantly 'interfering'. But I want to get into a relationship with him where he trusts me to be part of the process, without overly dictating minute-by-minute.

Anyway, he's calling for a block adjustment (separating two areas that are currently overlapped), so he needs some carving. We've arranged that I'll head down there Monday morning, to discuss the work so far, cut the block as needed, and then work out the final details together. If we can nail it down, we'll do so, and I'll give him the go-ahead to pull the edition. If I think we need more work, we'll do that. (I don't know at this point how many days he has spent on this, so don't know yet what my investment is ...)

Watch out for the next update Monday evening!

OK ... back from a long day downtown ...

When I arrived at the studio around ten, Numabe-san was hard at it, working on a batch of six proof sheets.

Six is more than I usually try myself at any one time (I'm speaking of proofing here, not editioning), as I find that trying too many variations at once is just too confusing, so I was a bit surprised to see so many sheets. But actually, these weren't all that different; because the print was already fairly 'close' - what with Gary's master printout, and my own proofs - it wasn't necessary for him to be trying wide variations. The goal for him in this proofing is to find out for himself how the blocks 'work', and then to try and 'bring it home' to where we want it.

Turns out that this is his third day of work on this one; he has assembled quite a library of test strips and notes on colour mixing, etc.:

While he worked, I cut down the mountain block to the shape that he recommended. I don't totally agree with the way that he wants to print that area, but have no desire to force him to use my methods. He's the guy who is going to have to make all the copies, so it's only fair to let him work in a way that is comfortable for him. (The result will be visually identical - it is just that I like having areas underlay each other (letting 'B' build on top of 'A'), where he likes having them on separate blocks, printing more times if necessary, but allowing more independence of colour zones.)

We then had a good inspection of what he has done so far, going over the thing inch by inch together with the master copy:

No single one of these proofs is 'OK' as it stands - we select the sky from this one, the cloud from this one, etc. etc., and he marks them up to keep track of our decisions:

Some of the work he has done so far is very good - as I expected, his gradation across the mountain is smoother than mine, and his sky is cleaner too. He has done a better job than I did with the 'redness' of the soil on the mountainside. But he is still 'short' on a number of things: he hasn't got anywhere near the correct colour on the islands, his seashore isn't well defined (he was loose with the registration there, thinking that a bit of blurryness/overlap in that area was OK for this type of print), his tree trunks were too light, and he had printed the island shadow after doing the sea colours, which left it indented, something that looks fine in the proper context, but which just looks strange here (shadows on water should be 'under' the surface, not on top ...).

So ... we then got to the big question; cycle around again, or move on with editioning? This really comes down to a balance of a couple of things: how much I trust his ability to understand today's discussions, and how much more money I can afford to toss at this one. We banged it around for a while, and I then gave him the go-ahead to make 60 copies. After I left, he must have started moistening the paper, and he'll be printing in the morning ...

A few more thoughts on today's meeting ...

When I first came in, I went into the back room to drop off my bag and box of blocks (Aspen Grove ... more about that later), and just got a quick glance at the sheets on his worktable as I went by. "Wow, looks great!" was what I was thinking ... When I came back into the workroom a minute later, and got closer, I saw that what I had seen were my own proof copies sitting on the table where he could see them as he worked!

He then opened his damp stack and showed me his own proofs, and you know, there really isn't a whole lot of overall difference between his and mine, which at first was a bit disappointing for me. But as we talked, I realized that this actually shouldn't be such a surprise; after all, we gave him - both with Gary's master, and my proofs - a pretty close guideline to follow. So it's perhaps natural that he hasn't taken it much farther than I did. Where Numabe's talents will come out is once something is decided and editioning starts. He will produce a stack of pretty much identical prints, and he will do so no matter what problems he comes up against along the way. We've already found that the paper we are using is really not up to this job (anybody know where I can borrow a time machine, to go and buy some 'good stuff'?), but he can 'handle' its flaws much better than I can. He also has much better fundamental 'technique' than I ... getting consistent gradations, smoother sky colour, etc. etc.

As for the money questions, we decided to do the job based on the system I mentioned in an earlier post - not worrying about a 'per sheet' price, but with me agreeing to pay him his standard daily rate, once the job is done. That leaves me a bit 'exposed', but I guess it's the fairest way to handle this one; because I can't afford to order very many copies (even with the extras that will go to Gary), he just isn't going to be able to work in a particularly cost-effective way.

Anyway, it's well after midnight here, and that's enough for now ... Sure wish that some of these guys lived a bit closer!

The thread continues in Hilo Bay [13] ...

'Shrink' back down ... | Discussion [6]

Time to sit down and feel a bit blue ...

'Stretch' to read the full entry | Separate page (with discussion [3])

Continued from Aspen Grove (5) | Starting point of the thread is here

Time for some more work on the Aspen Grove proofing. But first, a small side journey. Mike has been describing his prints as being made with 'ai' (indigo), in the tradition of 'ai-zuri' prints from the old days. This was a kind of sub-genre in which the entire print (or most of it, anyway) was done using just that pigment, giving a sort of ghostly effect.

But when I look at his prints, the blue I see there doesn't match what I have here in my pigment drawer labelled 'ai', and I thought it was time to sit down and try to figure out what he used as a starting point for his proofs. (And not coincidentally, to also try and sort out for myself just how some of these pigments compare with each other, the kind of thing that I haven't spent anywhere near as much time doing as I should have!)

Let's look at the stuff that I currently have in my 'arsenal':

These are mostly from Matsuyoshi Pigments, one of Tokyo's most respected suppliers of colourants to printmakers, painters, and people in the textile business.

I say 'respected', but honestly speaking, the place is nothing like it was, even 20-odd years ago when I first went there. Mr. Matsuyoshi is long gone, and the current managers - not by any fault of their own - no longer have access to the sort of pigments that were still quite commonly available then. (Things aren't completely bleak though; there is strong demand from workers in the textile trades for 'authentic' dyes and pigments, and this is promoting a lot of research into traditional colourants ...)

The six various 'blue' pigments I have are:

• 1) hon-ai - 'hon' translates as 'real', but in this case, that's a lie. When I bought this, I thought it didn't quite look like 'real' indigo, and when I queried the people in the pigment shop, they agreed, saying something like "Yes, you're right. This is a factory-made pigment. 'hon-ai' is the name of the colour, not any indication of what it is actually made from."
• 2) indo-ai - 'indo' is of course 'India', and this is imported from there. It looks much closer to what I understand as 'real' indigo, and I think that this is indeed extracted from the plants.
• 3) hana-ai - 'hana' is flower, but again, as with the first of these six pigments, this is just a label, not an indication of source. This too, has every appearance of being a factory pigment. (More about this one below)
• 4) kin-bero - also called 'bero-ai', bero being an attempt at the word 'Berlin' (or so the colour encyclopedias tell us). This pigment comes in good large chunks, and has gold coloured flecks and reflectance all over it.
• 5) Prussian blue - or 'purashan booroo' as it comes out in Japanese. A very fine powder. Interesting that this product is considered to be the same substance as #4 above, but look at the difference in the colour that has 'rubbed' onto the inside of the package ...
• 6) (name unknown) - (not in the photo above) a powdered pigment in a bottle marked 'Grumbacher' that I found at the back of my pigment cupboard. [Is this maybe what is known as 'ultramarine' in the west? If somebody can let me know, I'll update this page accordingly ...]

For eighteen years, I have used these pigments - and none others - for the blue (and mixes) on my prints. (The western pigment was used only once - for a mix to produce the sky on this print.)

Taking photographs of a pile of dark powder is not the easiest thing to do, and some of these differences are not going to be easy to see. So I have created quite large versions of these little images (in the popup), to try and let you see the details of the pigment texture, etc. Here they are, in the same order as I just listed them:

Now, that's all very interesting, but doesn't help us see the colour that they produce. Let me do some 'finger painting' on each one, just dipping my finger in water and rubbing a bit of the stuff around ...

The first two are very similar. The factory that made the first one did come very close to a reproduction of the natural plant pigment. (What will happen over time I have no idea, although I would perhaps expect that the natural one would fade more readily ...)

#4 and 5 are also similar, which is to be expected, as they are supposed to be the same thing, just in slightly different form - heavy lumps as opposed to finely ground. I have no idea at all how these are made. When I need a 'Hiroshige' water colour, I use #4 ...

#3 is interesting as - something I hadn't realized before - it seems to be a kind of blend of the indigo and the Prussian Blue. The wall cabinets of the Matsuyoshi pigment shop are jammed with rows and rows of bottles of such colours. I have written about this over in my Encyclopedia, how traditional printmakers do not generally use such pre-blended pigment mixes, usually preferring to make up their own colour from a small palette of 'base' colours.

Now, getting back to our proofing work on Mike's print, let's look at an enlargement of his proof, and try to figure out what he used to make it. The darker shades here have a lot of sumi blended in, so won't stand a direct comparison with the samples shown above, but I think at the 'thinner' levels of blue, he perhaps used his pigment pretty much 'straight'.

Well, what do you think? I don't think his pigment has the 'darkish' feel of the indigo, nor does it have the outright 'blueishness' that the Prussians have. If any of these, it looks perhaps quite similar to a light application of #3 ... with the 'icy' feeling apparent in the thinnest parts. But it certainly doesn't have the 'greenish' tone that comes with the buildup of #3.

Let's try looking at it a different way. To try and reduce the effect of the different paper and lighting, if we look at a print at a sharp angle, we can get an interesting view of the overall 'tones'. This is the same print, under the same light, with the same camera settings! Look at how 'green' it has become!

And then, if I lay some of those smeared samples on top of it one by one (still in the same order) we can see which ones feel right:

I think I'll clearly 'vote' for the third one ... although seen this way, it does indeed seem that Mike's pigment is clearly of the 'ai' type, and doesn't lean much to the 'Prussian' side of things ...

But there is yet one more aspect to this comparison that we are ignoring - the paper. It's actually impossible to make a fair comparison of pigments that are on different types of paper, as these test swatches are.

Down in the workshop now, with the beta block that forms the base layer of Mike's print. I've brushed some light pigment over it, although because that is so transparent, it's completely impossible just looking at the wood to see how much we have there. We have to take a test strip first:

... and then lay it down for comparison ...

Not even close, right? But the paper I used for that was just a strip of white copy paper. Let's try it again - exactly the same brushwork - but this time with a strip of washi trimmed from a previous printing job:

... and lay it down ...

Still not exactly the same shade/tone/tint that Mike used, but certainly in the ballpark. This question of how colours change depending on the underlying paper is so important in this tradition. Because the pigment applications are so transparent, it's completely impossible to tell what you are going to get just by looking at the pigment in a bowl, smeared on a test strip, or printed onto the wrong kind of paper. Here are those two strips side-by-side ... exactly the same pigment, at the same concentration:

So anyway, enought talking ... now that I've got these a bit more clearly understood in my head, let's make a print with this stuff ... #3 from the above list. I've drilled the blocks to take some 'hold-down' screws to keep the warping under control, have just made some washi moist, and will start another run tonight. I'll have to interrupt that in the morning, because tomorrow I have an appointment downtown with Numabe-san the printer, to deliver the Hilo Bay blocks and paper, and to have a good long discussion about what we need on that one ... if I can still remember!

This thread continues in Aspen Grove (7) ...

'Shrink' back down ... | Discussion [3]