The Road to Laser Woodblock Prints V: Moisture Control

After the frustrations of my previous printing session, I returned to the blocks with slightly more patience and, I hope, a little more understanding of the process. One of the dangers with woodblock printing is the temptation to force solutions too quickly: adding more pigment, rubbing harder, or trying to correct mistakes through sheer determination. The more I worked, however, the more I began to realise that the process depends less on force than on balance and timing. I decided to just do one block/colour per evening.

My printing bench

This session was devoted largely to printing the green tree areas. Compared to the sky and some of the more delicate colour blocks, these proved more forgiving, and for the first time I began to feel that the print itself was slowly starting to emerge from the paper rather than simply existing as an idea in my head.

The most important discovery concerned colour. During my earlier attempts I had been disappointed by how weak and washed out the impressions appeared. Looking at Edo and shin-hanga prints in books, one imagines the colours are printed boldly and immediately, but the reality is more subtle. I began to understand that depth of colour in mokuhanga often comes not from thick pigment, but from layering transparent impressions gradually over one another. Printing over the same area again gave the greens a richness and atmosphere that had been missing before. The colour became deeper, but still retained a softness and luminosity that opaque paint would have destroyed.

My birchwood woodblock for the cherry trees

The second revelation concerned moisture. Previously, registration problems had plagued almost every attempt. This time, however, I dampened both the paper and the blocks more thoroughly and, most importantly, allowed them to sit for around half an hour before printing. The difference was remarkable. The paper relaxed, the blocks stabilised, and the registration became noticeably more consistent. It became increasingly clear that woodblock printing is governed as much by water and waiting as by carving or drawing.

There is also something calming about this slower rhythm. The repeated brushing of pigment into the block, the sound of the baren moving across the paper, and the gradual appearance of colour all require a level of patience very different from most contemporary image-making. One cannot entirely dominate the process; one must instead work with the materials as they slowly settle into equilibrium.

The prints are still far from perfect, and there remain many technical issues to solve, but for the first time I felt I was beginning to understand the logic of the medium itself. The old Japanese prints increasingly seem less like simple images and more like carefully balanced accumulations of moisture, pressure, timing and layered colour.

Still some smudges and mis-registered areas due to shrinkage and, but the green sections came out ok.