A process question: There's so many bowls of pigment, yet the printer still mixes pigments "on the fly" on a brush.

Is there a rule here? I'd imagine accurately mixing pigments is easier up front for a bowl rather than doing so on a brush each time, but then again, those would be harder to adjust as you go along...

I'm glad you've asked this, because it will supply me with some 'ammunition' in my discussions of this with Ayumi-san. I'm now going to be able to tell her, "Ayumi-san, now even the video viewers are beginning to notice your laziness!"

For test printing - when making trials - it makes no sense to mix up bowls full of any particular colour. We just keep a collection of stuff on hand - like you see on her desk there - and dab bits of this and that onto the tile for mixing 'on the fly'. That gives us complete flexibility to try different things. But once the thing is decided - once the testing is over ... the printer must now reproduce that master copy as accurately as possible. The best/safest way to do that is by taking the time to mix up a batch of each colour required.

But Ayumi-san has got in the habit recently of not 'bothering' to do this; she feels confident of her ability to just make the entire edition 'on the fly', as she did with the testing. Now if that were true - if she was actually that good at this - then I would have no complaint, but her finished batches recently have had more variation from one copy to the next than I feel should be permitted. We've been sparring back and forth on this issue, and for the most part she's been winning. (Basically because I never do any printing anymore, and am almost never up there in the printing workroom ... She is left unattended for the most part these days ...)

But this Matsushima print is an _important_ edition, not 'just' a small postcard print that will be purchased as a little souvenir of a trip to Japan, and your comment here has been a good 'prod' to push me to be more strict with her ...