It's pretty clear you're working primarily from the Met copy, so I'm curious what your plan is when it comes to the various 'mistakes' you've pointed out in it. Are you going to reproduce the lines you've identified as probably being sloppy or incorrectly cut? The uneven/non-parallel lines of the seal box? Integrate the extra boat coloration as an extra block? Go so far as to reproduce the 'damage' as an actual part of the image? Those last two seem like they wouldn't be worth recreating...

Albert asks some interesting questions! I'm leaning toward the approach of creating this print as if the craftsmen of Hokusai's day were aware of the ultimate cultural value of this design and took the extra effort to do everything excellently. To purposely reproduce sloppy work seems to be just wrong.

Well, I'm certainly not going to integrate any damage or hand-painting; no purpose to that I think. And I won't be putting in the nicks and chips that I can see - there will be enough of those present in my own work.

For the cartouche box, my current thinking is that for the hanshita I will prepare a pair of 'perfect' outlines (easy in PHotoshop, of course) but then carve them freehand one side. There were three ways used to cut straight lines in these traditional prints: 1) ruler both sides (giving mechanically straight lines - used only for architectural elements), 2) ruler one side freehand the other (giving a line basically straight, but still retaining a degree of 'hand' feel), and 3) freehand both sides, which is 'anything goes'. The Met copy is clearly 3) - and done pretty carelessly at that. As I mentioned, I'm leaning towards 2) at present …

I'll be discussing these points further when we actually get to the carving stage ...

I did a search of the Great Wave at the Ukiyoe-Search website and came up with quite a number of different versions of the image. The one from the Art Institute of Chicago is suppose to be from the 1830's ??

http://ukiyo-e.org/image/aic/99030_512676

Julio, that's from the same block set (I think) as one of the copies in the British Museum - showing the 'famous' broken line over at the right hand side, behind the boat.

I can't be sure, because when I was searching around last month, I could only find a small .jpg on the Chicago site, way too small to be useful in this work. If you can find any large images in that database (minimum 2500 pixels across - larger would be better) please let me know!