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) ...