#Josei moku hanga to amazon how to#

I know a bit about Japanese prints, but had never tried my hand at the traditional Moku Hanga woodblock printing technique. April, a great teacher and printmaker, has travelled to Japan to perfect her skills.

KU Prof Elaine Cunfer and I took the class along with five other students.

#Josei moku hanga to amazon how to#

For more information about the techniques of moku hanga, see and barenforum.April Vollmer demonstrates how to carve registration notches on woodblock.Īpril Vollmer recently taught a two-day Moku Hanga workshop at the Printmaking Center of New Jersey. For a more extensive list from M.I.T., go here Zokin: A small wooden block covered with cloth primarily used to print bokashis.Washi: traditional Japanese paper made from the bast fibers of the mulberry plant.Ukiyo-e: Literally, 'floating pictures' referring to 17th>mid/late 19th century prints depicting secular subjects.Tokibo: or hakobi a small brush used to apply pigment to the block.A movement that became popular during post WWII Japan. Sosaku-hanga: 'self-prints'- prints that are designed, carved, and printed by the artist.Shina: Japanese basswood or lindenwood often used as easily-carved woodblocks.Shin-hanga:'new prints'- refers 20th century woodblock printmaking revival often featuring layered color landscapes.Sakura: Japanese cherry often used for woodblocks.Ōban: a print size about 15½ by 10½ inches (39 by 26.5 cm).Nori: Paste to keep pigment in suspension made of rice, potato or tapioca.Nishiki-e: Multi-coloured woodblock printing.Moku hanga:Japanese for woodblock prints.Ita-bokashi: 'block shading' a technique for producing gradation achieved by sanding or abrading the edges of the carving.Hanshita: The drawings used as a guide to later carving.Keyblock: Roughly, line blocks often containing color.Chūban: a print size about 7 by 10 inches (18 by 25 cm).Bokashi: A graduated color impression often seen in traditional ukiyo-e print backgrounds.Beta ban: A flat, consistent color block.Baren-suji: Impression marks made with a baren- intentional or not.Baren: The traditional printmaking 'pad' that is used by manually pressing the inked block.Hanga bake have long handles, maru (round) bake resemble shoe brushes.

Bake(hanga or maru): traditional Japanese printing brushes made of horse or hog hair.

I’ve noticed that this reconstituting doesn’t work as well with commercial tube watercolors since there is gum added and it results in a grainy texture. I’m also not quite sure that the step of pushing the pigment through the sieve is necessary since the ground particles are much finer than the screen.Īfter printing, mixing bowls are left to dry around the printing desks and are reconstituted (unless starch paste had been added) by simply adding a little water and stirring with the tokibo without apparent problems. I was a little suprised at the Ultramarine since it is a mineral pigment. I suspect that this will result in less hard-won pigment being lost and may go a bit faster.Īs of several days later, both the Ultramarine and the Indigo did not separate to clear water. Mokuhankan is planning to compare this traditional method of grinding pigments with using a western-style glass muller/ glass slab combination. The idea of keeping a selection of pigments stored in ‘paste’ form in an alcohol/water mix is discussed in ‘One-Point Lesson’ #6 in another section of the Encyclopedia.

Additional references: Preparing powdered pigments can be found in a “Tools and Materials” section David Bull’s Encyclopedia article.