We begin the second half of our series with another Meiji-era design, one that wasn't intended as a print in its own right when it was first published. The scene you see here was actually just a small part of the background of a much larger print, but it caught my eye when I first saw it, and I promised myself that one day I would bring it into the 'foreground', as I have!

Earlier in this series I talked about how white objects in Japanese prints are usually depicted by using the bare whiteness of the paper, and we saw another example of that in the previous print, where the pale moon in the sky was created by simply 'leaving out' part of a background block, allowing the paper to show.

That same method - borrowing the white of the paper - is commonly used when creating snow in woodblock prints, but other methods are also available to the craftsman. One way is to carve a block for the snowflakes, and then print them in an opaque white pigment which will cover up the colours underneath. When this method is used, the snow will appear in the same pattern on all copies of the print, of course.

For this print I have used yet another method, one familiar both to Meiji-era craftsmen and young children in school even today - spattering pigment with a brush. It's simple on the face of it - just dip a stiff brush in gofun (white pigment) mixed with glue and spatter away - but actually has to be quite carefully managed. Just one over-sized blob of white would spoil the entire effect, as well as the print, so I position a mesh screen at a set distance over the paper, and 'shoot' through it; this catches any large spatters, only letting the smaller ones get through.

The effect is quite realistic I think, although of course the result differs somewhat from print to print. On most of them I tried to create the effect of gentle flurries over the water, but on a few I perhaps got a bit carried away, ending up with quite a snowstorm! Perhaps I should send those copies to collectors who live in the most snowy places, to make them feel at home!

Coming up next month we have something a little bit special. We'll jump from Meiji all the way to ... the Heisei era!

David

January 2011