The Road to Laser Woodblocks II: The Drawing Becomes Instructions

Edward Luper, Cherry Blossoms at Regents Park, 2026

The difficulty was not in making the drawing, but in learning how to limit it.

In earlier work, I had not needed to think in such terms. In my series of views of the tower, colour was something that could be extended almost indefinitely. A pane of glass might contain several shades within it, each slightly different, shifting with light. There was no particular need to reduce or simplify. The image could absorb variation without consequence.

A woodblock print does not permit this kind of freedom. Each colour requires its own block, and each block carries a cost; not only financially, but in time, in labour, in the physical act of printing. It becomes necessary, then, to think in terms of economy. How many colours are essential, and how many are merely incidental?

I found myself setting a limit of twelve. It seemed, at first, generous. In practice, it was not. A single element could require several tones to feel convincing. The cherry blossoms, for example, could not exist as a single pink. There is the distance of the trees, the nearer branches, the blossoms themselves catching light in different ways. Three variations of pink disappeared quickly, leaving fewer than expected for the rest of the image.

An earlier version of the drawing did not survive this process. Faced with these constraints, it began to feel dull; overburdened in some areas, unresolved in others. I abandoned it and began again from a different angle.

The scene itself was familiar: a road lined with cherry trees in Regent’s Park, which had always reminded me, in some quiet way, of the garden scenes in the work of Utagawa Hiroshige. But to draw cherry blossoms proved unexpectedly difficult. Too many, and the image became crowded, almost decorative. Too few, and they lost their presence entirely, reduced to something like soft clusters suspended on branches. The balance was not obvious.

It seemed to me that in such cases, the earlier masters did not aim for strict description. The trees in these prints are not botanical studies, but reductions; forms simplified until they carry only what is necessary. There is a restraint in this, and perhaps also a confidence: that suggestion can be more effective than completeness.

Working within a limited number of colours only sharpened this problem. Each decision had to justify itself. Colour was no longer descriptive, but structural. To add a tone was to commit to another block, another stage in the printing process. The image began to organise itself around these constraints, rather than in spite of them.

It also required a stricter way of working. Where before I had allowed colours to overlap or blend freely, I now had to separate them with care. Each layer needed to be defined, self-contained, and precise. The drawing, once fluid, became something more deliberate, less like a painting, and more like a plan.

At a certain point, it ceased to be an image in the usual sense. It became a set of instructions: this area for one block, that line for another, each element assigned and fixed. The freedom of drawing was still present, but it had been redirected, shaped by the conditions of its making.

What remained was the question of whether something of the original atmosphere could survive this process of reduction. Whether, within these limits, the image might still breathe.