Key Blocks Completed for New Prints

I've just finished cutting the key blocks for my next set of prints.

I've decided, for personal family reasons to call them 'The Grace Quartet' and they're closely based on images I found on the internet from an 1860's Japanese woodblock print book of pictures attributed to Hiroshige. The images are certainly in his style, but whether they were actually by him, I'm not sure.

As you'll be able to see from the photo of the colour blocks, which I'm now starting to clear, the images are fairly monochrome, either blue or peach. The blue irises will have a large graduated tone in the background.

Each of the 4 prints are approx 5 x 7 inches, and as you can see, I'll be printing 2 images at once, something which I do quite often as it's a good economical use of materials and time. It was also common practice in Japan where a block could contain a number of individual prints which would be cut down later.

Spare time has been thin on the ground this year for printmaking, but I'm hoping to get this set completed in the next month or so. Then it's on to my annual Christmas/Winter print. I'll post some really good news about my 2008 Christmas print in the next few days.