Moku hanga washi full size#
Moku hanga washi series#

Classes included field trips to local museums and galleries, hands-on workshops at a traditional paper mill (washi) in Tokyo, and interactions with local visiting artists, master printmakers and other Japanese students. This method deeply influenced some late 19th-century Post-Impressionist artists, such as Van Gogh, Toulouse Lautrec, Edgar Degas and Edouard Manet.Īt Tokyo National University of the Arts, students studied the treasured historical skills and tools of Moku Hanga with greater understanding and appreciation.

While in the Western tradition, oil-based ink is applied with a roller and printed onto the papers surface, often with the help of a press, in the Japanese tradition water-based ink is applied with a brush and, while being printed by hand, is pressed deeply into the absorbent Japanese paper. My next project, should I choose to accept it :), will have different requirements so that's why I'm doing paper research.In Summer 2018 Professor Jimin Lee took a group of UCSC Art students to Japan to learn Japanese woodblock printmaking “Moku Hanga” known as the “Ukiyo-e technique” widely studied by artists today. It's a soft-ish paper with a pleasing creamy tone, embosses well, and holds color beautifully. I haven't used it for straight up mokuhanga, but I have no reason to think it wouldn't do very well dampened and under a baren.

Mawata - I used this paper for white line prints, which means that I printed dry with it, but it was fabulous for that and held up really well to strong rubbing with a spoon.

It's a workout with the baren because it's so thick, but it prints beautifully and I really enjoy how the prints hang.

Moku hanga washi full size#

Gekko - This is a very thick 100% kozo paper that I chose for making prints with full size sheets.It's a nice paper, whiter than many handmade Japanese papers, and it behaved very well under repeated strong applications of color and big baren pressure.

Moku hanga washi series#

Yukimi - I took a big chance on this paper, choosing it for my Fire Series mostly because of its name, which means 'snow viewing.' I just thought it would be helpful to print Fire images on Snow paper.It worked OK for that series,which only required two impressions of color, but I'm not sure how well it would perform with multiple overprints. Shioji has the feel of a cotton rag paper, and some of the tendency to stretch that a rag will give you. Shioji - used for the halftone dot prints I made in the Relics series.The surface is fairly hard, a little bit difficult to work with, but definitely the right look for that historical series - a bit somber and earnest, and colors not as vibrant when dry. Nishinouchi - I chose this for its darker tone when I was doing a series based on colonial American history.Thick and kind of fluffy, this paper holds up very well to multiple overlays of color, keeps its shape, and colors stay bright when dry. Echizen Kozo - one of my all-time favorites.In the past I've kept my paper supplies pretty limited, purchasing familiar papers from familiar suppliers so that I could focus on the other myriad variables in the mokuhanga process rather than also constantly adjusting to new kinds of paper, but I've managed to work with quite a few papers nevertheless, and now that I'm looking for some new paper I want to do a quick run-down of what I've used. I have some ideas brewing and not many supplies left in my studio, including paper, so I've lately been researching Japanese paper trying to figure out what kind of paper I need for my new (still imaginary) work and… just wow. Anyway, it's taken me longer than I imagined to bounce back from that project into making some new work. It has its own web site if you want to check it out:. It's a standard deck, composed of 78 cards - 21 (the major arcana) were done as full woodblock prints and 57 (the 4 suits) were printed in parts and collaged/composed digitally. It's slower than Instagram and other scrolling-based social media, it's more personal, and it makes me pause long enough to clearly articulate my thoughts and feelings.Īs you may know, I've spent the past two years creating and distributing a tarot deck, called Woodblock Dreams Tarot.

I haven't been posting much these days, as blogging seems a bit old fashioned in 2022.