Curiously Drawn

Japanese Relief Print Ready to Ship

2011-06-14T10:10:00.006+01:00

It's been a bit of a rush, and working with paper I'm not used to, which has caused it's own problems, but at last I've got my prints completed, dried, and ready to ship.

With more time I would have corrected a few things, but generally I'm happy with how it turned out.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I've used 4 blocks, but with a second impression on the light grey block in a few areas to create some shading: on the bottom edge of the lighter branch on the left, and on the blossoms.

I was using paper I'd never tried before for this print, and despite plenty of proofing I was finding it hard to get a smooth, even spread of colour in some places. It was much more textured than I'm used to.

If you look closely at the black branch, you will find the Kanji characters for 3rd Month (March) and 11th Day hidden in the design, the date of the 9.0 earthquake. The blossom pattern matches the seismic data map for the 12th March of Japan. To me, the sparrow represents the strength of character of the Japanese people in the face of such a terrible event.

Japanese Earthquake Relief Print

2011-05-27T15:41:00.007+01:00

It's been a while since my last post; 'Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans' John Lennon wrote, and Blogging is what doesn't happen when life does.

I had to post something about the first of 2 international print projects I'm involved with this year.

The first is known by 2 names, 'Inspired by Japan' and 'Relief in Relief'. Click on the links for related web pages.

Over 60 woodblock printmakers from around the world are submitting prints to raise funds for relief efforts in Japan following the earthquakes and tsunami in March this year.

Here are the blocks for my print, 4 in all, black,mid grey, light grey and pink.

The image is inspired by traditional Japanese motifs: sumi painting, nature, cherry blossom etc, and a seismic map I spotted online which showed all the earthquakes and aftershocks in the couple of days after the 9.0 quake.

I need to proof and print my blocks next week in order to hit the deadline, so I'll post some progress reports as I go.

'Original Print. How can that be?'

2010-04-22T16:30:00.004+01:00

I'm sometimes asked why I refer to my prints as 'Original Woodblock Prints'. How can a print be original? Here's a great little explanation from The London Original Print Fair website.

What is an original Print?
An original print is an image produced from a surface on which the artist has worked, such as a stone or wood block or a copper plate. This surface is intended by the artist to be a stage in the creation of the artwork. Thus the original work of art in this case is the print itself rather than the block or plate, from which it is printed.

Grace Prints up on Etsy

2010-04-22T16:07:00.009+01:00

I've got my 4 Grace prints up on Etsy at last. Here they are...

For more info, check out my Etsy Shop.

New Print completed

2010-02-11T16:58:00.011Z

I'm just about to start trimming and packaging my next print.

It's based on a simple Hiroshige print I came across in a book I have, which I reduced down and played around with in Photoshop before pasting it onto the blocks to carve. On the original print, the sparrow was printed the same red colour as the flower petals. I've changed it to something a little more 'sparrowy'.

There are 4 magnolia blocks in this print, the black key block, red, grey and one block which had the brown and deep red seal. The black and grey block are both printed with sumi ink.

The image is approx. 6x16cms (2.5x6 inches) and is one of my smallest, but most finely detailed prints to date. The edition will be around 50 or 60.

I'm pleased with the result as this was a real learning exercise for me. I wanted to do some tight, detailed work and get a really even finish to the printing of the colours.

This print has taken me some way up that very long and interesting path.

I'll be doing more prints which are based on Japanese images in the future (how better to learn the process than by following the experts?) but for now, I want to create some new designs based on the landscape and wildlife around my home town in the Ribble Valley. The public response I've got from prints based on my own designs as opposed to 're-creations' of old images has given me the confidence to work on my own ideas.

My re-working of existing images, mainly from old Japanese woodblock print ehon (picture books) has been a kind of correspondance course across the centuries, and I'll always return to them to learn, reproduce prints and to seek out endless pleasure and inspiration. There really is nothing to compare to these humble looking little books in the West. Here, there has always been some kind of mental block to the idea of a book which is completely devoid of words. It's an alien concept to most people, sadly.

I'm sure the Japanese influence will still be visible in my new prints too though. As other European and American printmakers and artists discovered towards the end of the 19th and start of the 20th Century, once you've exposed yourself to the amazing breadth, vibrancy, energy and quality of Japanese woodblock print images it's impossible to see the world around you in the same way again. A bit like looking at the sun too long, but it a really good way.

Before that though, I need to print up my Grace Prints. The blocks are waiting, the proofs are done. I just need to set aside a day or two to print the edition.

What's all this stuff?

2009-11-13T11:19:00.003Z

Regular visitors to my blog may have noticed a few Amazon gadgets appearing. I hope you don't mind.

I've decided to add these to help all the people who email me to ask about what animation or woodblock printing reference books I would recommend.

At the top of the page are a range of really good and easily available books on woodblocks, and at the botton of the page is a slideshow of animation books, DVDs and CDs which I'd recommend to anyone wanting to learn how to animate. These are all items which I own personally and feel should be a part of any animator's or woodblock printmaker's library.

There are also more obscure, and out of print books which I would also recommend, but the ones I've highlighted are a great start.

I'll be updating my choices as new books appear, so keep checking in.

Ribble Valley Art Open Exhibition Update

2009-11-13T11:12:00.002Z

Just a quick one.
The framed copy of my 'Ribble Valley Winter View' sold on the opening day of the exhibition!
I'm very pleased, and I hope the purchaser will be too. I'm selling unframed copies of the print in the Gallery/Museum shop.

Grace Prints - Proofing

2009-11-13T10:34:00.008Z

I've just completed a day of proofing on my next set of prints, prior to final printing.

The images here are of all the blocks printed together to check registration, but I've also printed proofs of all the colours separately to make sure there are no stray areas of block which are catching the paper and leaving ink marks. So it's been a case of print a little, then knives out and clear a little.

Because the images are very clear and open (even simple, in a way) I've had to do more proofing than I've done on other prints. A mistake on such an airy image would really stand out, and I want to keep rejected prints to an absolute minimum, so proofing is time well spent.

I'm only using 2 colours and black for all these prints. The 2 tones of Ultramarine and Cadmium Red are being mixed directly on the blocks prior to each print. The lighter tones use much less pigment, but it's coming from exactly the same paint bowl as the darker tone. On previous prints I would have pre-mixed 2 shades of each colour in my paint bowls for each block.

The reason for this change in technique is thanks to David Bull's new eBook on woodblock printing, 'My First Print'. Don't be mislead by the title though. Even if you're long since passed your first print, there is a wealth of information on woodblock printing techniques for printmakers of all levels, and especially those who, like me, have learnt all they know so far only from books and the internet.

Dave's eBook contains video demonstrations and audio files, as well as written info and images, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in this field, collector or printmaker.

I've realised I need to undo some bad techniques I've developed by not having a tutor to guide my learning.

I also had the honour to collaborate with Dave in a small way by creating some illustrations for the eBook using a cartoon version of Boots the Print Studio Cat which I designed for him.

Print and Sculpture in Exhibition

2009-10-20T20:55:00.004+01:00

Recently I submitted a couple of woodblock prints and a sculpture for selection in the first Ribble Valley Open Exhibition. The exhibition is open to all artists of any media, the only criteria being that the artist be resident in the Ribble Valley area. (You'd be surprised how many there are!)

I received notification about a month ago that one of my prints, 'Ribble Valley Winter View', which some of you out there received as my Christmas print last year, and my sculpture 'Resting Figure' had both been selected for exhibiting.

My winter view print has been doing very well for itself, and is now in it's second edition of 60 prints. (I'm not a big fan of artificially limiting my prints to force the price up. Prints are a democratic medium, and as such, should be printed and priced with the same philosophy.)

I was asked if it could be featured in an article in the English language Japanese magazine, 'Japan Close Up' . They wanted to do a piece on foreign artists who were inspired by Japanese art, and found me on Etsy!

Susan Ashworth, of the Lancashire Museums Organisation (co-curators of the Ribble Valley Open)which manage all the museums and art galleries which fall within Lancashire County Council's responsibility called me a couple of weeks ago to ask if they could buy a copy of the print for the Lancashire Museums' permanent collection, which was great. I now have one of my prints in the collection of Lancashire's art gallery archives. I'm happy to admit it quite made my day! When Susan arrived to collect the print, she also bought one for herself, and mentioned that they're considering printing a postcard or Christmas card of the image at some time in the future.

I've included a copy of the back and front of the poster/leaflet for the exhibition. The sculpture in the image is mine.

It's made from cast concrete (about 12 inches high and very heavy) and patinated to look like bronze. The sculpture was originally created in clay, from which a 2 piece plaster mould was created. The clay was scooped out, and the mould cleaned, before very carefully pouring a finely mixed concrete into it. When the concrete has dried, the plaster mould is very carefully chipped away to free the cast sculpture which is cleaned and finished.

The technique results in only one sculpture from the waste mould, and the clay original is also destroyed during the process which makes the finished sculpture a unique one off.

I have one framed copy of the print in the exhibition for sale, and 50 unframed woodblock prints from the same edition packaged for sale in the Museum/Gallery shop. The exhibition runs all the way through until the 10th of January next year, so I'm hoping some of the visitors would like the print as a little Christmas stocking filler.

Key Blocks Completed for New Prints

2009-09-30T19:58:00.009+01:00

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.

Grandad's Japanese Painting

2009-09-10T12:02:00.007+01:00

I think I mentioned in an earlier post that my late Grandad, Stanley Mason had an interest in Japanese art. I didn't really know about this until recently when I was talking to my Dad about him, and the pictures I remembered hanging in his house.

One of those was one which I was suprised to hear he had painted himself in the late 1950's. It's now owned by my Cousin, but she was kind enough to email me a copy, which you can see here.

I've been told he was friends with a Japanese gentleman he knew in Liverpool at the time (I wish I could trace him) who helped him.

He also took a lot of landscape photos, mainly in the Lake District and wanted his compositions to have a Japanese style to them (most probably Hiroshige) and as such never wanted people to be looking into the camera, but rather looking into and responding to the landscape around them. Much to the annoyance of my Granny, apparently.

So, the question arises, is there any connection between my Grandad's interest in Japanese art and mine? Is it just a coincidence? Lot's of people who aren't related to me obviously like it; but is there, perhaps, something in the way my Grandad's brain and mine that made us almost predisposed to be attracted to Japanese art and prints, and for us both to want to create our own art based on it?

I don't know. I have a vague, unformed theory of something I call Hereditary Memory. Memories or feelings, which, like physical and mental attributes are perhaps passed through the generations. The reason why some people feel inexplicably called to the sea or the countryside because our ancestors were probably either farmers or fishermen. My Grandad's father was a printer and print compositor as well.

My Grandad was a fascinating man. While living in Liverpool he was very closely involved with the Folk music clubs and, so I have been told, played a part in Paul Simon's first UK visit as a young unknown singer songwriter. My cousin has a set of old reel to reel recordings of Paul Simon's performances in the Folk clubs which I've never heard.
In Paul Simon's song, 'Homeward Bound' (which he wrote while sitting at Widnes Railway Station during that first UK tour) are the lines '...every step is carefully planned for a poet and a one-man band...' and I like to think he's refering to my Grandad there. It's also slightly amusing to think that my Grandad played a part in making Paul Simon miserable enough to write that song!
Curiously, here's a print from a Japanese woodblock print book I saw online recently which looks just like my Grandad.

Woodblock Print Cost Calculator

2009-09-10T11:16:00.003+01:00

One of the biggest questions for anyone produces artwork is 'how much do I charge?'

With animation the answer is always, 'How long is a piece of string?'

There are a myriad of things which can alter the cost of animation: complexity of design or action, illustration style and deadlines are just really the tip of the iceberg. You need as much information from the client as possible in order to calculate the cost.

With woodblock printing it's a little different. You have the materials, your time and what you consider your artistic worth.

So, how much do you charge for a print? What is the break even point where, even if you don't make a profit, you can cover the cost of materials and your time?

I wanted to work this out in a way that I can apply to all the prints I've produced to date, and the ones in the pipeline, and so I've put together an Excel spreadsheet 'Woodblock Print Calculator'.

Here's a screen grab of part of the first page.

I've tailored it to work the way I work, which I've standardised to make the packaging and shipping of prints easier. At the moment my prints either fit A4 or A5 cello bags, although the actual print size may vary.

As you can see, I can enter the title of the print, how many prints I intend to produce, how many blocks I will use, and how many colours (or impressions) there will be.

An 'A5 Twin' is my name for 2 prints cut on the same set of blocks, which cost less to produce than 2 A5 prints on separate blocks.

Based on this information and prices of blocks, paper and other materials which I've added, the spreadsheet works out the actual cost of materials to produce an edition, and a single print.

It will also work out my packaging costs, and my labour costs (based on any yearly income and hours you input) for the whole process from design to slipping the finished print into the cello bag.

It's taken a while to work out the formulas in Excel which run in the background, but I can now accurately cost every print I produce, even down to adding a % profit mark-up and including VAT.

The good thing is that I can continue to add new materials to include in the calculations and update any changes in material costs with one click, and the spreadsheet will recalculate all the totals.

I've also added a 'Reprint?' button, which, if you enter 'y' (yes) will remove any of the materials and labour costs related to design, cutting blocks, creating hanshita etc.

Sheet 2 of the calculator is a 1 page summary of all the total calculations which you can print off as a handy reference.

I'm pretty confident that I've got all my calculations right, and the Woodblock Calculator does work for me. I suppose this is Version 1.0 and in the future I'll add extra bits. I'm sure any woodblock printer with basic knowledge of Excel (or a friend of a printer!) could tailor it to suit their work practices too.

If you'd like a copy, let me know and I'll email the Excel file.

Save Kids TV

2009-04-27T13:07:00.004+01:00

Please have a look at this...

...and then spend a little time at Save Kids TV

Production of children's TV in the UK has been going through a rough time recently, and the muddy grey cloud of economic gloom hasn't helped either. Look closely at a lot of the shows around at the moment, are they really UK produced shows? There are a lot of obviously imported shows from the US and abroad, but there are a lot of kids shows that may look like they come from the UK, but are actually produced abroad. Just because the voices sound like they come from the UK, don't assume that all the animation or the animation production company comes from the UK.

Where are the UK made children's programmes and animation that ooze and smell of the UK? I'm ashamed to say that you won't find many, or any on the UK tv channels.

I love animation, and I love creating stories for our children. In the past UK TV company executives had the confidence to let creative programme makers get on with what they were good at. There was trust, and there was a feeling that it was important to reflect our little UK world to our children to make them feel more like a part of it. The daft things, the eccentricities of life on our little island, the weird little things we do here that no-one else in the world does. Not the big bland pan global beige stuff that saturate our screens.

Culturally significant children's animation shows are much more important to developing a sense of connection and belonging to your home country than most people realise.

Our view of the world and how we fit in is shaped by the things we're exposed to as a child, even more so now with today's children and the broadcast media they're exposed to. There's nothing wrong with viewing the big wide world, but it matters that a child knows the feel and smell of it's own doorstep. Children's TV in the UK should be the secure home doorstep from which they can look out on the world. UK Children's TV made wholly by UK programme makers is vital to our children's understanding of who they are.

Children's TV Campaign

2009-04-27T13:00:00.003+01:00

This is a recent film to highlight the problem faced by programme makers by the Government's change of policy regarding advertising around children's television, and how children's TV, and in particular animation, has been affected by it.

Elmer Fudd & Bugs Bunny's ancestors

2009-02-06T21:24:00.014Z

If you ever get the chance to read a copy of STRUWWELPETER by Heinrich Hoffmann you will be richly rewarded. Not only are the cautionary tales, originally written and illustrated in 1844 by Hoffmann for his 3 yr old son, amusing in themselves, but it becomes quickly apparent how much they have influenced popular culture ever since.

Where would Tim Burton be if it wasn't for Shock Headed Peter with his wild hair and long twig-like finger nails and Conrad, the boy who wouldn't stop sucking his thumbs and had them chopped off by "the great, long, red legged scissor-man"? (What Hoffmann's 3yr old son thought of that, history does not recall.)

But most interesting for me is the story of the wabbit... sorry, rabbit... who turns the tables on the hunter, a theme harking back to the Middle Ages and forward directly to the emergence of the Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny partnership in the late 1930's and early 1940's.

Struwwelpeter would have been a well known children's book by the Warner animators as it was translated into many languages, and not forgetting the large number of German immigrants who's children may have carried their favourite book across the Atlantic with them.

Like the Animal Frolic Toba Scrolls from 11th century Japan and the illustrations of Heinrich Kley (who I'll post about soon), humorous drawings of anthropomorphic animals say so much more about the human condition, satirising mankind's desires, weaknesses, irritations, injustices and foibles than a 12 page essay or pious sermon could ever do.

Year of the Ox Prints

2009-02-06T21:08:00.005Z

I finished my Year of the Ox woodblock Postcard prints a couple of weeks ago, and here they are. The finished edition size is about 25. My previous post on the design of the Ox postcard is HERE.

I overprinted the green background with a bokashi graduation effect from the bottom of the print, and a second doughnut shaped bokashi effect on the ox.

When my wife, Sally, saw the finished print for the first time she said it looked like a baby on a space hopper. Job done.

The prints were made using Hydrus Pigment Watercolours and printed onto blank Japanese postcards.

Park Post Christmas Animation

2009-01-20T13:04:00.005Z

As promised, here's the Park Post Christmas animation, it's hugely compressed, but I hope you can see it well enough. The live action was shot and edited by Julian Kronfli (see my links in the sidebar) and the animation was produced mainly on paper (with a little extra in Flash) and scanned into Digicel's Flipbook for painting.

Year of the Ox Postcard Print underway...

2009-01-20T12:18:00.007Z

I know I'm starting a little late on this small print with the Chinese New Year only a week away, but better late than never.

My Year of the Rat postcard prints sold very well on Etsy throughout most of the year with people buying them as gift cards for babies born last year and for older people who's birthday's fall in previous years of the rat.

My Ox print is a little different from other prints I've produced in that there is no key block, no linework holding the image together. It's closer in style to a lot of images produced by modern woodblock printmakers in the 1960's and 70's and has slight echoes of that period by transforming the ox into a "Spacehopper" (a rubber balloon toy which was very popular during my childhood.)

I never owned one but remember being really disappointed when I had a go on a friend's spacehopper. I'd imagined that you could really bounce on them, that you'd be propelled by the bounce, but in reality you had to do all the work with your legs.

The spacehopper was just a big orange rubber bag of air that was more hinderance than help. Life lesson number 17, age 6.

Back to the print... What you see here is the rough image, coloured in Photoshop, printed out (in reverse) and pasted onto the blocks. I'll be using 2 shina ply blocks with 2 impressions on each, green, light brown/pink, flesh and dark brown/black with a little overprinting here and there to create other tones.

I'll be getting the blocks cut while I wait for an animation client to decide what he wants and hopefully get printing by the end of the week.

Seal carver to recommend - Harmonyunion

2009-01-20T11:40:00.007Z

I've just recieved this beautiful seal set, custom made for me by Liwen Deng in China. He has an eBay shop from where he sells his own carved seals and custom designed seals.

I asked if he could carve my name using Kanji (or original Chinese symbols), but he also carves words in other languages (or a mixture of both) as well as images or any other designs. If you can design it, Deng can carve it.

As you can see, the seal is made up of 4 symbols which read phonetically as Mark Mason.
Each word meaning is: Ma--a horse, Ke- overcome, Mei-plum flower, Sen-forest.

I wanted something humourous to reflect my work as a cartoon animator, and a horse overcome by a forest of plum blossoms is quite fun.

What is so good about Deng's service is the quality of the materials he works with and his skill as a carver, added to which, he supplied the seal in a beautiful little case with a small tin of seal paste, and all for $15.00 and around $7.00 shipping from China to the UK.

I have a couple of designs of my initials which I use on my prints which I'm going to ask Deng to carve as seals.

Please have a look at Deng's eBay shop "Harmonyunion" and support a great hardworking craftsman.

Original Artwork on Sale at Etsy... NOW

2008-12-09T10:31:00.006Z

Winter Scenes Set 1

In the next couple of days I'm going to be listing a small pile of original ACEO/ATC sized (2.5x3.5 inches) artwork in "Mark Mason's Curiously Drawn Print Shop" over at Etsy. ACEO stands for Art Cards, Editions and Originals and ATC stands for Artists Trading Cards.

Miniature pieces of original art and limited edition prints have become very popular over the last few years and I've decided to respond to requests for artwork by producing my own. There will be more to follow.

In total there are 53 original pieces, and I'll also be listing a VERY small Limited Edition Print run of the images.

I've divided the artwork into Series and Sets. Each set in a series comprises of only 5 images and 1 title card. I've kept the sets small because if people want a complete set, they only have to buy a total of 6 cards. I really dislike the seemingly never ending series, I think it's dishonest to genuine collectors, and especially at a time when we're all watching our money.

So, in this initial collection of original illustrated cards I've got 9 sets:

Winter Scenes 2008 Set 1

Winter Scenes 2008 Set 2

Animal Portrait Studio Set 1

Animal Portrait Studio Set 2

Hokusai Artists Set 1

Hokusai Artists Set 2

Japanese Lanterns Set 1

Kanji Animals Set 1

Kanji Animals Set 2

Here's an image of the Japanese Lanterns Set 1

All the images are produced on heavy stock acid free watercolour paper using quality watercolour paints, pastels and coloured pencils. The Winter Scene title cards are edged in silver leaf, and the Hokusai Artists sets are highlighted in gold leaf.

All the artwork will be either initialled or stamped with my personal seal, depending on the style of the image, and the reverse will be signed, dated and contain all the details about the image and the set that it relates too.

Christmas Print

2008-12-09T09:57:00.004Z

It's been a very busy year, with one thing and another, but I found the time to get a small 5x7 inch seasonal print produced which I'll be sending out photomounted to a card this Christmas.

The colour and style is inspired by woodblock sketchbooks by Hiroshige who produced some amazing images with just a couple of blocks. A real inspiration.

The main challenge I gave myself on this print was the cutting and printing of the black lines. In every print I've produced I've wanted to get the linework finer and although I've a long way to go, I'm pleased with the result.

It's called "Sally, George and a view of the Valley" and depicts a slightly stylised rendering of a view of Pendle Hill, the small town of Clitheroe, where we live and Clitheroe Castle. (No little English town is complete without it's own castle, and Clitheroe can boast to having the second smallest Keep in the UK.)

Pendle Hill dominates the landscape around here, and looks different every day. In an odd way it's my Mount Fuji, and I'd like, at some time, to produce a series of images in a similar vein to Hokusai's 36 Views.

I used 2 Magnolia blocks, one key block and one blue which I printed 2 impressions from. The first was a pale blue, and the second was a Bokashi effect in a darker blue at the top of the sky and over the figures in the foreground.

The seal in the top corner reads (so I'm reliably informed) "Let your heart fill with wonder".

All the prints (around 45) were trimmed and photmounted onto slightly silvery matte cardstock and will be posted out over the next few days.

It's that PARK time of year again...

2008-12-09T09:43:00.002Z

A quick note to look out for the latest Park Christmas adverts. The little pink fairy is up to her usual tricks in the pre Christmas campaign which is currently on air, to be followed by a much more slapstick post Christmas ad which, surprise surprise, will be on our screens after Christmas.

As usual, the commercials were produced by my old friends at Kronfli-Duliba Productions, and I supplied all the character animation, some of the special effects and keyed out (in 2D) the CGI elements.

Once the post Christmas ad is out, I'll upload a copy of it to view.

It's really good fun, a lot more physical humour.

The poor little fairy gets...

You'll have to wait. I can't say anything yet, but keep your eyes peeled.

Monkey Magic. Journey to the West

2008-07-26T15:00:00.001+01:00

A quick mention of the new website for the fantastic Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett opera "Monkey: Journey to the West". I was fortunate to catch the opera, filled with acrobatics and sword skills during it's premiere performances in Manchester in 2007, and have been waiting ever since for the music to be released on CD, which it is just about to be.

Listen to 3 tracks HERE.

If you get a chance to see Monkey, don't let it slip by. The character designs, costumes, music and performances are great. I hope they've improved the subtitling design since the Manchester shows.

I'd loved to have had the chance to work on the animated sequences too.

Speaking of which, the BBC has commissioned the Monkey team to produce animated idents for their Olympic coverage. View it here. It's lovely to see some quality 2D animation fronting such a big event.

New Etsy Shop

2008-05-27T10:15:00.000+01:00

I've opened a new Etsy shop to try and help those people who know me better when I'm wearing my animator's hat.

I've had contact from people who couldn't find me on Etsy because they'd been searching for my name.

My new Etsy shop address is http://markmason.etsy.com/

CuriouslyDrawn will remain open for the time being to help redirect visitors to the new shop.

The Art of Japan Exhibition

2008-05-27T09:42:00.001+01:00

We seem to be doing very well for exhibitions of woodblock prints in the North West of England this year. If you hurry, you can catch the last few days of "The Art of Japan" an exhibition of woodblock prints and paintings at the Peter Scott Gallery at Lancaster University.

The exhibition is made up of prints on loan from the Blackburn Art Gallery collection and the University's own collection and include original works by Hokusai, Hiroshige, Utamaro, Eisen, Koson and many others. There are examples of Ukiyo-e prints, including Hokusai's "Great Wave", "Red Fuji" and "Fuji with Lightning" and also some beautiful surimono (Monkey & Turtle), Sumo prints, silk painting and some lovely examples of prints from the Shin Hanga movement.

Monkey and Turtle Surimono

The real highlight for me though were 3 woodblocks in a glass cabinet, and one in particular. It was an original block of a page from one of Kitao Masayoshi's abbreviated drawing books! I never thought I'd ever see one of those. I would never have imagined that any would have even survived over the years, but there it was. It had obviously been cut in half, as a block for a book would have 2 pages on it, and it had also been painted white with the relief lines painted black at some time in it's history.

The exhibition runs until May 30th, late night Thursday until 9.00pm.

Tests for new print set

2008-05-01T16:48:00.012+01:00

My studio table today.

I've not posted for a few weeks because things are a little busy at the moment,

but at last I'm able to show you the first test prints of a new woodblock project I've started on.

I've given myself the task to produce 3 animal and 2 haiku calligraphy prints per season.

These are my "Spring" animal prints.

The baby rabbit and robin picture is called "Sakura" (Cherry Blossom), the Japanese characters for cherry blossom are hidden in the branches of the tree. The grey rabbit and blue tits print is entitled "Rabbit Calligraphy" (Although I've hopefully got the Japanese characters for rabbit and calligraphy right, I don't know how to say it!). The rabbit has written the word "spring" using his brush and ink. The final image of the kimono clad dancing mouse is called "Harukaze" (Spring Breeze).

I've searched for Japanese script haiku that reflect the seasons and also include a reference to animals and I've carved 2 of these. The Spring haiku I've chosen are:

New Year's Day: the clouds are gone and sparrows are telling each other tales.

(Ransetu)

Serenely gazing up at the mountain - a toad.

(Issa)

I'm keeping the designs quite simple, and, at most, only using 5 blocks, although a block could contain more than one colour. The original drawings were pretty loose and sketchy and so I'm trying to keep the prints that way too.

I'm using Shina ply and each image is about 5x7".

The aim is to do a print run of 30 to 40 of each image, of which 20 will be set aside for the final stage of my project. The remaining prints which are good enough will be sold individually (I estimate around 5-10) as a very limited edition.

So, the final stage...

You may have noticed that 2 of the test prints are on the same piece of paper. This is because the paper is going to be folded down the middle (with the reverse side of the images facing each other) to form the 2 sides of a book page.

When I've produced a set of 3 Spring, 3 Summer, 3 Autumn and 3 Winter animal prints with 2 seasonal Haiku for each (a carved block of Japanese characters), a "chapter" title for each season and a couple of information pages, I'll bind them together using Japanese papers and bookbinding methods to create 20 5x7" original print books for sale through Etsy.

So don't be expecting the books any day soon. It will probably be around this time next year (at the earliest) as I've got to fit in the small task of earning a living doing the day job. The "extra" prints will be available throughout the year, as I complete them.

I realise the economics of this project don't make any kind of business sense; but sometimes the pleasure in just producing something that a few people may really enjoy is reward enough.

I'll be printing these from next week and then I'll have to start thinking about the Summer prints.

Hiroshige in the Pleasure Capital...of Blackpool

2008-03-31T19:26:00.006+01:00

In January I posted information about the exhibition of original Hiroshige prints "The Moon Reflected" and it's arrival in Blackpool at the Grundy Art Gallery.

We went to see it over the weekend, and I'll be going back again before it closes on April 26th.

It was fantastic, and I urge everyone not to miss this great opportunity to view, close up, these woodblock prints, produced in Hiroshige's lifetime.

We've all seen these images in books and reproduced as posters; some of us may also be lucky enough to own a modern woodblock reproduction from The Adachi Studio, but it's not every day that you get the chance to see original period prints. These are what the prints Van Gogh and his friends saw looked like. This is what fired the Impressionists; and it will inspire you.

If you're an illustrator, artist, printmaker, graphic designer, animator or web designer and you haven't been to this exhibition yet, then hang your head in shame. It's so rare for prints of this age and quality to make it out of the British Museum's collection and travel to a small gallery in the North of England, and on our visit (on a very wet Saturday afternoon) there were only 3 other people there!

Thank you British Museum and Ikon Gallery. We all can't just pop down to London to see these prints, and I for one will never forget the experience of viewing this art.

The arrival of these prints in Europe over 150 years ago revolutionised art and design. It created a seismic shift so large that it's difficult to imagine what route European art, design and photography would have taken without them. I'm not overstating this, but we are now so used to seeing the influences of these prints that they're virtually invisible to us. Start to really observe, rather than just looking and be astonished. Even artists and designers who've never heard of Hiroshige are influenced by him through a kind of visual osmosis.

The exhibition runs until April 26th. You still have time to get there.

A Blast from the Stone Age Past.

2008-03-31T18:48:00.005+01:00

As a result of some online conversations about new developments in traditional 2D paperless animation and some of the very early pieces of animation software (Hands up; who had an Amiga computer and ran DeluxePaint and Take2 on it?) I received an email from Jerome Lorin who kindly included a link to a piece of animation I worked on with Billy Allison from Core Design in 1994.

Have a peep HERE.

It was a title sequence for the Sega computer game "Chuck Rock II". We had to work within the huge constraints of computer game memory at the time, and so the animation is rather limited in places. I thought I'd add it to the Blog purely for it's nostalgia value. At the time though, the title sequence received a host of 5 star ratings in computer magazines.

The "inking" and colour work was produced in DeluxePaint, on good old Amiga computers.

I continued to use an Amiga for animation pencil tests (Using the excellent Take2 program) up until the end of "Second Star to the Left" in around 2002. Amigas were great little computers with excellent graphics capabilities (2D and 3D) far in excess of PCs at the time. It's a shame they got left behind in the blitz of hype and publicity that surrounded the dull old PC that most of us use today. Amigas were happy computers.

Hydrus Watercolour tests. The results are in...

2008-02-25T09:06:00.003Z

The completed test image.

6 months ago I started a test to check the lightfastness of Hydrus Fine Art Watercolour by Dr. Ph. Martin's as compared with Winsor and Newton Artist's Watercolour which has a measured lightfastness rating. Previous posts on how, and why I decided to run this test are HERE.

As you can see from the above image, and compare it with the image from the start of the test, there is no fading. The slightly lighter appearance of the red at the top righthand side is due to my application of the watercolour and can be seen in the original image too.

The Hydrus colours are the top 3, the Winsor and Newton are the 3 at the bottom.

I was expecting to see some evidence of a faded edge line where I'd placed thick card to create the unexposed areas, but there is none.

This test sheet has been sat in a south facing (ie: direct sunlight) for 6 months. The area on the far left has been unexposed, the next section exposed for 2 months, the next for 4 and the far righthand side has been exposed for the full 6 months.

The weather has been bright and sunny on the whole. You would never put a watercolour painting in direct sunlight, so this has been a tough test for the pigments. The Hydrus colours have stood up to the task brilliantly, and I'm now confident that I can produce water based woodblock prints with either the Hydrus colours or the Winsor and Newton watercolours without any fear of fading.

The good thing about the Hydrus colours is that they're so quick to use straight from the bottle and diluted with water. One drop of colour goes such a long way, and by using the pipette each bottle contains, it's easy to keep a record of mixing and diluting measurements just in case you need to remix another amount. I just wish they were more readily available in the UK. I had to order mine via mail order in the US.

I hope others will find this test useful when deciding which materials to use for their art projects.

A Kind Mention...

2008-02-16T12:10:00.002Z

I received a very nice mention on Tatsuko's Blog recently. She'd had a hunt around Etsy to find the nicest ratty items for Chinese New Year and decided to include my Year of the Rat postcard. Have a peep at her blog, she makes some really charming items.

The Curiously Drawn Print Shop

2008-02-05T11:18:00.000Z

"The Curiously Drawn Print Shop" on Etsy has opened it's doors with it's first 2 prints; my Year of the Rat postcard and "Sparrows", a new, improved print run of my Baren Exchange 34 Chuban print.

I'm hoping to slowly add to the number of items for sale over the next few months, so please keep an eye on the shop at CuriouslyDrawn.etsy.com, or this blog.

THE WOODBLOCK PRINTS OF ANDO HIROSHIGE

2008-01-14T15:46:00.000Z

The Otsuki Plain in Kai Province. Kai otsukigahara

Whilst writing my last post on Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery I stumbled across their link to a breathtakingly huge site devoted exclusively to every print produced by Hiroshige. It's an understated, cool and classy site with a mammoth display of beautiful prints, many which can be enlarged.

It's HERE and don't blame me if you're not seen by your family for the next 3 weeks.

TOKAIDO - HOEIDO EDITION. Lake at Hakone Pass

Lancashire's Great Ukiyo-e Collection.

2008-01-14T14:57:00.000Z

Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery

Images provided by Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council for the Cotton Town digitisation project: http://www.cottontown.org/.

Opened in June 1874, the early French Gothic styled Museum and Art Gallery in Blackburn, Lancashire, UK is the home of over 1000 original woodblock prints and many other printed gems by William Morris and illuminated manuscripts, icons, oil and watercolour paintings. They even have an Egyptian Mummy and a stuffed greyhound!

It's the woodblock prints and the other printed books and manuscripts in the Hart Gallery that are the highlight though, and the Cotton Town website is filled with lots of information on it all.

I'm proud to have this Art Gallery within 30 minutes of where I live.

Here are the links to the Japanese Print pages:

Intro page to Japanese Prints

Development of colour printing in Japanese woodblock prints

Reprints, colour and deterioration in Japanese prints

The care of Japanese prints

Famous Views from the 60 Odd Provinces intro

The 53 stations of theTokaido Road ‘Tokaido Gojusan Tsugi No Uchi’ into and images of all 53 prints

'Famous Views of the 60 Odd Provinces' all the images from the Blackburn Museum collection for this series.

Horai Temple in the Steep Mountains of Mikawa Province

"Hiroshige: The Moon Reflected" Exhibition coming to Blackpool

2008-01-14T11:57:00.000Z

Utagawa Hiroshige. Sea at Satta, Suruga Province (Suruga Satta no kaijō) Thirty-six Views of Mt Fuji (Fuji sanjūrokkei) Spring 1859 Colour woodblock print Courtesy: The British Museum

Currently running at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham until 20th January, this is a personal selection of Hiroshige's print's (mainly from his later period) by British artist Julian Opie and Curator of Prints at the British Museum, Timothy Clark.

The exhibition will then be moving north for seemingly it's only other venue, The Grundy Art Gallery in Blackpool from 8th March until 26th April 2008.

It's going to be a fantastic opportunity to view a small part of The British Museum's original Hiroshige prints. This exhibition features three series as well as a number of the artist’s sketchbooks and the famous Snow, Moon and Flowers triptychs. "Flowers" is one of my favourites. The flowers refered to are actually the Naruto Rapid Whirlpools of Awa Province.

Second image in the Tryptych "Flowers"

"Snow" is also pretty fantastic; so simple but so deep and consuming. I love them all.

"Snow" image three.

A full colour catalogue of the exhibition has been published and is currently available from the Ikon Gallery online shop.

See you in Blackpool!

Year of the Rat Print

2008-01-14T11:22:00.000Z

Year of the Rat 2008

Here's my latest print, a 6x4" postcard to celebrate the New Year.

It's printed on Torinoko type Japanese size postcards, available in pads of 50 from Baren Mall. The black key block was carved on a small piece of cherry I had, and the remaining 3 blocks (1 for the green foliage and coin colours, 1 for the rat and darker leaf lines and 1 for the background colour and folds on the sack*) were carved on Magnolia blocks from Intaglio Printmakers.

I used Dr. P.H. Martin's Hydrus colours, and the chop/seals were made by myself.

By the way, my Hydrus lightfastness test is still underway, and will end on Feb 21st when I'll post the results.

Here's the complete print run of over 70 prints, and those that aren't posted out I'll put up for sale on Etsy when I get my store sorted out. I'll keep you posted on that.

* David Bull kindly emailed me to let me know that the sack I refered to is actually (kagami mochi) two rice cakes stacked up "... a traditional new year decoration. The lines are the traditional way of drawing cracks in the surface of the cake ... as it dries out (it isn't eaten) the outer surface becomes hard and cracked ..." Here's a link to The Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme with more info. Thanks Dave!

I should also have said that my print was based on 2 designs by Woodblock Artist Kawanabe Kyosai (1831-1889) which I combined in Photoshop before printing it out and pasting it onto the blocks for carving.

Kyosai's work is full of weird ghosts and creatures, and his anthropomorphic animals are great fun. He's little known in the West compared to Hokusai and others, but shouldn't be overlooked as a great source of inspiration.

Adachi Institute Woodblock Videos

2008-01-10T09:51:00.000Z

Here's a very interesting little site I found while I was tootling around The Adachi Institute's Japanese site: CLICK ME The first page shows images of blocks used to produce Hokusai's Great Wave, and also shows the various individual impressions if you have a click around. If you click on 2 and 3 at the lower part of the screen a short video loads. 2 covers carving and 3 covers printing.
What I found most interesting about the carving video is how the block cutter uses his Hangito (knife). If you watch carefully he uses both the bevelled edge against the line and the flat edge. I assume this reduces the need to turn the block.
In the printing video it's also interesting to see that the printer uses a brush to wipe pigment onto the block rather than the small bamboo hakobi, which he just uses to stir the pigment.

Here's the link to The Adachi Institute's English Site and Japanese Site. The selection of prints available from the English site is tiny compared to it's larger parent Japanese site. I bought a copy of The Great Wave from them last year as a birthday present for myself and it really is beautiful.

"Granny's Teddy" Christmas book now available...

2007-12-03T13:53:00.000Z

"Granny's Teddy", a wordless children's Christmas storybook I designed and illustrated is now available to buy HERE.

Details: Hardback. Full colour picture book. 30 pages. 22 x 28 cm.

"Granny's Teddy" tells the story of "Granny", who like many people of her age never had a teddybear, until now. Teddy drops in on Christmas Eve, comes to life, and turns her life upside down.

The idea for the book was based on a true story (honestly). When I was about 12 years old I bought my Granny a teddy for Christmas. She loved it, and told me that she'd never had a teddy when she was little.

Later I heard from my Mum (her daughter) that she would talk to it, and sit the bear on the chair next to her when she watched TV. The teddy had become a friend. The idea stuck with me, and many years later I came up with the idea for this book.

I've self published through Lulu.com after struggling with publishers who loved the illustrations and story but couldn't understand the concept of a book with no words.

The illustrations are produced in watercolour, gouache and pencil, and you can view some low resolution preview pages by following the link above. I've set the price just above the printing charge. I'm not looking for big profits, I just want people to read my book.

Yes; I do mean read.

When I was 11, in my 1st year at Clitheroe Royal Grammar School for Boys, I leart something I've never forgotten...

Our English teacher, Mr. Garth Sutcliffe asked us to read a certain number of pages from "The Otterbury Incident" (I think), after which, we'd be tested on what we'd read.

One question in particular went something like this: "On page #, how many people in the picture are wearing hats?"

We all complained that we only had to read the pages he told us, and he agreed, and asked us why we hadn't read the pictures.

"READ THE PICTURES" has stayed with me ever since. Thank you Mr. Sutcliffe.

New Animation Player Added.

2007-11-21T11:23:00.000Z

I've added a new element to the bottom of my Blog page; a nifty little video player from the bods at YouTube. You can either press play and sit back and watch a run through of the clips of my animation, or click on the small 3 squares button to find pop-up thumbnails of each clip.

I hope you like it.

"Sparrows" Autumn Woodblock Print.

2007-11-08T13:47:00.000Z

Here's a copy of my latest print: I've called it "Sparrows", for obvious reasons.

The image is a reproduction of a page from a 1797 Ehon (Picture book) entitled Choju ryakugashiki (How to draw animals in the abbreviated style) by Kitao Masayoshi (Keisai).

Click HERE to view my earlier post about this artist.

The print was produced using 3 Magnolia blocks: Black, Sepia linework and Burnt Umber body colours. I used the Hydrus colours I'm testing, and produced an initial run of 40.

I tried a different print run order this time. As the image was only quite small and there were only 3 blocks to print, instead of printing one colour throughout the run, and then returning to the first piece of paper and printing the second colour etc., I completed each print with all 3 blocks before moving on to the next.

It was great fun to see a completed print appearing every 5 minutes, but more importantly for me it meant that because the time between each colour pass was only about 60 secs or so the registration was spot on with no time for the 'cool' dampened paper to expand or contract.

The paper size is approx 10x7.5 inches (Chuban), the image is approx 7x5 inches.

The decision to reproduce an existing (albeit virtually unknown image) rather than produce an original design was that at this stage I really want to concentrate on learning the craft of carving and printing, to become fluent with the tools of woodblock printmaking. I have ideas for prints stacked up in my head and in notebooks but I think it's important to be proficient in the method of communication you choose to transmit your idea.

A good idea can be lost through bad communication.

I feel like I'm improving and learning with every print I make. This is only print No. 3 but each print has been a real step forward.

Hydrus Ink Permanence Test. 2 Months in.

2007-11-01T17:11:00.000Z

Just a quick update on my 6 month test to compare the permanence of Hydrus Watercolour Inks with the established permanence of Winsor & Newton Artists Watercolours.

We're now 2 months in, and the strips of colour have spent all that time in a south facing window.

We've had a bright and sunny late Summer and early Autumn (Fall, for our trans pond chums) and I've exposed the next section of the test sheet to reveal... ABSOLUTELY NO FADING WHATSOEVER in either the Winsor & Newton or the Dr. Martens Hydrus colours.

I did't think it was worth posting an image at this stage. I'll post an image at the end of the test.

Based on the results so far, I've decided to use the Hydrus colours on my next woodblock print, which I've finished cutting and have just started to print. I'll post that in the next few days.

Here's my post at the start of the test: HYDRUS TEST START.

900 Year Old Animal Caricatures by Toba Sojo

2007-10-04T16:49:00.000+01:00

Toba Sojo (1053-1140), Japanese painter-priest, who painted the Animal Caricature, or Choju Giga, scrolls, which are considered among the finest examples of Japanese narrative scroll painting.

Toba Sojo was a Japanese nobleman of the Heian period who became a Buddhist abbot. The famous set of 4 scrolls representing caricatures of animals and people (in the Kozanji, a monastery near Kyoto) are attributed to him, but modern scholars now believe that he was the author of only the first two scrolls painted during the second quarter of the 12th century, and the remaining 2 by an anonymous follower of the artist who worked during the early 13th century.

The Animal Caricature scroll can be viewed HERE. At the top of the page are a row of numbers in little boxes, numbered 1-18, in reverse order. Click on [1] to see the far right hand part of the scroll and work your way up to [18]. The scroll reads right to left.

It's such a beautiful piece of illustration. The linework is highly skilled and delightfully economical, the poses and actions of the animal characters are so finely observed and the pacing of the events portrayed give a real feel of a passage of time: the areas of landscape without characters add timing to the scroll, as does the monkey being chased by the rabbit, in effect "through shot" as the scroll would have been rolled right to left.

It's just beautiful, and produced around 1130AD! (I'd have believed anyone who'd said that it was produced today at 11.30AM.) How did Toba produce pictures that look so contemporary when drawings from Europe and the rest of the world in that period look so much of their time?

E. H. Shepard, T.S. Sullivant, Heinrich Kley, Beatrix Potter, A. B. Frost, Harry Rountree and Disney's Nine Old Men could all find a common connection with the animals in this scroll.

Like a lot of Heinrich Kley's animal illustrations, a lot of the finer satire is lost on us, but what we miss in 900 year old satirical comment is more than made up for in the subtle references to the timeless human condition and the sheer pleasure of the energetic animals wrestling, swimming and frolicking, all rendered in a free, humorous spirit which show Toba Sojo's mastery of brushwork and remarkable feeling for animation.

I've stitched all 18 images together as one long image which can be scrolled through to give the best impression of what it would be like to read as a scroll. It's too big an image to post, but it's an easy enough exercise to do in Photoshop, and well worth the effort.

Hydrus Watercolour Permanence Test Starts.

2007-08-21T17:12:00.000+01:00

Test Card. Hydrus - top, Winsor & Newton - bottom.

I've started my permanence/lightfastness test today. As you can see from the image above I'm using 2 sets of primary colours; Hydrus Fine Art Watercolour by Dr. Ph. Martin's and Winsor and Newton Artist's Watercolour. I want to see if the Hydrus colours are lightfast, or at least as lightfast as the W & N colours.

On the bottles of Hydrus it says: Hydrus fine art watercolour is made from the finest artist's pigments which have been chosen for extreme lightfastness and brilliance. Hydrus gives to the watercolourist a new freedom to blend and intermix while maintaining the transparency and luminosity of the colour.

On the test card I've produced there are 6 stripes of paint, the top 3 Hydrus colours are: Cadmium Red, Hansa Yellow Light and Phthalo Blue. I diluted them by 2 drops of water to every 1 drop of liquid colour.

The Winsor and Newton colours are: Cadmium Red (rated A permanence, ASTM I.), Winsor Yellow (rated A permanence, ASTM I.) and Winsor Blue (Green shade) (rated A permanence, ASTM II.). Each of these were diluted to the same level as the Hydrus colours.

The test card is now standing in a south facing window with the "6 month" section only exposed. The rest of the card is securely covered with a very thick piece of grey card.

On the 21st October I'll expose the next section, along with the existing exposed area, and the final area will be exposed on 21st December. The test will end on 21st February.

I'd like to use the Hydrus colours to produce woodblock prints, but if the colours fade hugely then I'll stick to traditional tube watercolour. We'll see...

Hydrus colour fade test.

2007-08-17T20:20:00.000+01:00

I've just purchased a couple of bottles of Dr. Ph. Martin's Hydrus Fine Art Watercolours to try out for watercolour painting and woodblock printing. I couldn't find a single reference to their lightfastness on'th internet although the marketing blurb says that they're produced using pure pigment, not dye and that they are all permanent and lightfast... we'll see...

I'm going to run a test over the next six months to compare their lightfastness against Winsor & Newton Artist's Watercolour. I'll paint stripes of colour using red ,yellow and blue from both products and leave the paper partially exposed in a south-facing window.

Every two months I'll expose a little strip of the colours to the light, and after six months I'll have a colour chart of results ranging from unexposed, through two and four months to six months.

I hope the results will be useful to anyone else wondering about this product.

I'll post update images every two months.

Wisdom from the Past.

2007-08-16T20:19:00.000+01:00

We all have our own personal drawing styles and rules which we follow without thinking. I've picked up good and bad habits along the way, and continue to learn every time I put pencil to paper. It's fascinating though when you stumble across technical knowledge from the past that chimes so strongly with the way you work now.

Here are a couple of examples:

The first is an extract from a letter by Vincent Van Gogh to fellow artist Anton Van Rappard between 1881 & 1885.

"He (Delacroix) had a discussion with a friend about the question of working absolutely after nature, and he said on this occasion that one must get one's studies from nature but that the ultimate picture ought to be made from memory. That friend was walking with him when they were having this discussion - which had already become pretty vehement. When they parted company, the other one still wasn't entirely convinced. Delacroix let him toddle on for a bit after he took his leave, and then (using his two hands as a speaking trumpet) he roared after him in a lusty voice, to the consternation of the respectable citizens passing by, "Par coeur! Par coeur!" (From memory!)

Another thing - the painter Gigoux comes to Delacroix with an antique bronze and asks his opinion about it's genuineness. "It is not from antiquity, it is from the renaissance," says D. Gigoux asks him what reason he has for saying this - "Look here, my friend, it is very beautiful, but it is starved from lines, and the ancients started from central things (the masses, the nuclei)." And he adds:"Look here a moment," and he draws a number of ovals on a piece of paper - and he puts these ovals together by means of little lines, hardly anything at all, and out of this created a rearing horse full of life and movement. "Gericault and Gros," he says, "have learned this from the Greek - to express the masses (nearly always egg-shaped) first tracing the contours and the action from the position and the proportions of these oval shapes"

Now I ask you isn't this a superb truth?"

I couldn't agree with Mr. Van Gogh more. When I first read this last year I was astounded to realise that the way I always draw, and especially when I'm rough keying animation, is exactly as is described in this letter. I'm using the same technique to create movement and form as the ancient Greeks, and it still works every time.

Most "How to Draw" books on cartoons use a version of this but I've yet to see one that I'd really recommend. They have a slightly dishonest way of reverse engineering a drawing back to a series of circles that don't help the reader. A new one of these books shows readers how to draw the Simpsons. Don't believe them, the book will teach you nothing about drawing.

Van Gogh's earlier mention of working from memory keys into the way Japanese artists used to work. They didn't follow the Western school of study for art which was based on copying from life, sat infront of whatever your subject may be, and recording it in as much detail as possible. The Japanese school was about observation of nature without recording. I've read of artists watching birds, for example, for two or more hours without putting a brush to paper, and then turning away and drawing from memory, capturing the essence, spirit and movement in simple expressive strokes. It's a fascinating way to work, and one that I've been using in one way or another since I first started to draw, without realising the history of the technique. I very rarely use sketchbooks on location, but I observe intently and can draw anything from memory. I used this technique recently at a life drawing group. Not putting pen to paper until the last minute of the pose, but just observing prior to that. The resultant drawings were simple but strongly posed and weighted, a distillation of the subject.

New Animation production...

2007-07-23T21:11:00.000+01:00

This is a visual I produced for Kronfli-Duliba Productions to illustrate the concept for a new set of TV commercials for Park, a major Christmas Hamper and savings scheme located in the UK.

I've provided the character animation for all of Park's commercials since they introduced the Pink Fairy 5 years ago. In fact I helped design the character too.

We have just started to produce the animation for 3 new commercials, due to run from Autumn this year and into next year.

I can't say anything about the content of the ads except that they'll be as entertaining and charming as ever. Julian Kronfli at Kronfli-Duliba Productions has devised a sharp and witty concept and his live action direction is second to none. The key point to directing the live action for these commercials is that his main star, the Pink Fairy, will be added later by me, so all the scenes have to be shot with the animated character just being imagined in Julian's head. He has to direct the actors to react to something that isn't there.

I've received the live action footage and Julian and I have discussed what the fairy has to do. We usually come up with some additional ideas regarding the character's performance, and throughout the animation process I will add to that to round out the emotional performance and the character's interreaction with the actors.

I'm not going to show any material during the production, but once the commercials are on air I'll let you into one or two secrets about the process of animating a 2D character in a live action world; or at least how I do it.

View one of last year's commercials at Park's website HERE.

Printing the Woodblocks...

2007-07-19T13:25:00.000+01:00

A long day printing a run of 40 prints, using 3 Cherry blocks, 2 of which were carved on both sides to give a total of 5 passes; light blue, yellow, red, blue and black, printed in that order.

I printed the light blue first because in a test I'd done the secondary colours created by the over-printing looked better with the red and yellow passes printed on top of the light blue rather than the other way around. I was after a blueish yellow and a blueish red rather than a yellowish and reddish blue.

I worked from light to dark with the colours following the same order when producing a watercolour painting, finishing with the black.

I know the black is usually printed first to assess any changes in registration, but I didn't want the colours to over-print onto the black and weaken it and mean I'd have to print the black again, so I risked it. I suppose I could have printed the linework in a very pale blue first, and then printed it finally in black, but I didn't have the time.

Printing is scary! There are so many considerations; keeping the paper consistantly moist, (probably too strong a word. I would use "water cooled") constantly assessing the amount of pigment and paste to use and regulating it throughout the print run, clearing bits of the block away when it started to catch the paper (my fault - I should have done many more proof prints before my print run to correct things like that. Again, so short on time.), and many other things.

Anyway 13 hours later with only 30 mins for lunch I had my 40 prints. I layered them between dry cartridge paper with my heaviest books on them and closed the door on them for the night wondering if any of them were good enough.

A couple of days and a couple of changes of cartridge paper later the prints were dry and ready to sort out. I've managed to select the best 31, and I hope they meet with the approval of the Exchange participants. Some have come out well, others have blotches and marks that I wish they didn't have. On the whole though, I'm pleased with how my second woodblock print has turned out.

Had I known how difficult it would be to produce such an odd shaped print in a minimum of 3 colours I may well have not signed up, but I did, and I'm glad I did.

I've learnt so much producing these prints; much more than is possible to read in books. The subtle amounts of pigment and paste, so much a case of less is more, and how easy it is to use too much. The use of the baren and how much pressure to use, again slight variations make a world of difference to the finished result. I was only just starting to get the hang of it by the end of my 5th block. A book can't show you how much pressure to use. One man's heavy pressure is another man's light touch; you can only discover that by doing it.

So I hope all the participants of Baren Exchange #33 will be kind to me. You can only improve by doing something and the pressure of a deadline is perfect motivation.

Right, what should I do next? I'm going to concentrate on linework next. I want to improve my carving skills for detailed lines...

Print Progress

2007-07-19T08:38:00.000+01:00

Work and life have been rather busy recently, so on the day that I post my prints to the USA I can quickly grab a few minutes to update my progress on the print exchange. The images in this post cover completion of the carving of the key block in Cherry and a print taken from it, which was then used to reproduce the areas for the individual colour blocks; the carving of the Cherry colour blocks and a test printing of the colours.

Key Block and print, including Kento marks.

After printing the linework I removed the border and other lines that weren't needed for the finished black print. They were printed to be used on the colour blocks. The Kento marks were also printed in order to transfer the same registration from the key block to the colour blocks. I used this print to draw up all the colour blocks.

2 Carved colour blocks

Close up of red block

Once the carving was completed I did a test print of each block in the colours I'd selected. I'm using Winsor and Newton Artist's Watercolours for this print.

Colour tests

The 3 colours I'm using are: Alizarin Crimson, Yellow Ochre and Phthalo Blue. I'm using the blue in 2 strengths, one as a kind of "grey block" to create simple shading and secondary colours and a stronger mix for the sky, domes and doors.

Getting the Design onto the Woodblock.

2007-05-20T09:44:00.000+01:00

Inked Hanshita and Cherry Block

Above is the final inked design. It's been drawn on Hanshita paper available from Baren Mall.

The paper is made up of 2 sheets lightly adhered. One is a very light fibrous paper on which the design is drawn, and the other is a heavier support.

I traced the design onto the hanshita using my animator's lightbox and a Faber-Castell permanent ink brush pen from their Pitt Artist Pen range.

I'm going to try carving in American Cherry. A local timber merchant had a piece large enough for 3 blocks of the required size. I'll carve the colour blocks on both sides, giving me the 5 impressions I need. The timber merchant machine planed the blocks for me, but I've had to smooth them down initially with a small plane, sandpaper and repeated wetting and scraping with a cabinet scraper.

I've have found no national suppliers of All-Shina plywood in the UK, which I would have used, just because it's easier to cut, but the Cherry will be good practice, and is closer to the Japanese Cherry used by Ukiyo-e artists.

The next step was to paste the hanshita onto the block, but not before making a photocopy of it. The photocopy won't be used at all, it's just for my archive. The original inking will be destroyed by the carving so I want to keep a record of it. A whole new topic on "cartoons" could start here, but I'll save that for another time.

Firstly I blobbed rice paste (pre-mixed in handy tubes from Intaglio Printmakers in the UK) onto the block and rubbed it in well. I didn't put too much on, just enough to spread very thinly across the whole block. I then dabbed the paste with my fingers to break up the smooth surface and gently rested the hanshita (with the design down, facing the block) over the paste and quickly pressed it down, trying to avoid creating any air bubbles or pulling the paper out of shape. When the paper was firmly stuck down, I peeled the support layer of paper off, leaving behind the thin paper, with the now reversed image partially visible through it. I again checked for and carefully removed any air bubbles and left the paste to dry.

Hanshita pasted on Block. Rice Paste and Support Paper to left.

Here's a lovely little tip: Camellia Oil.

Although the design is visible through the paper fibres, and you can rub away some of those fibre layers to increase the clarity of the image, Camellia oil (available from Baren Mall, other art suppliers and from eBay Japanese shops) is almost magical in the way it reveals the inked line. Literally a drop or two on the block, and quickly rub it in. It makes the paper fibres almost invisible and the inked line looks like it was drawn directly onto the block (as in wood engraving).

Camellia Oil and Block

Close-up linework after Camellia Oil is applied

Print Design. Mk II.

2007-05-17T22:34:00.000+01:00

I've tidied up my design for the print exchange, and got it in the correct format.

I've had to play around with the layout of the buildings because of the narrower width, but it's looking ok. The cat is a little more visible now aswell as he works his way down the picture. I realise some people may see 5 individual cats rather than 1 cat captured 5 times like a multple exposure image. I don't mind. Which ever way you view it, the feeling of travel and movement as your eye wanders down the image is still there.

This weekend I'm hoping to ink up the design, transfer it to the key block, and start carving.

Kitao Kiesai's Abbreviated Drawings

2007-05-17T21:02:00.000+01:00

Here's a woodblock print artist who's style is so radically different from all the better known Japanese artists that I've got to wave the flag for him: KITAO KEISAI (Masayoshi) 1764-1824.

He pretty much single-handedly pioneered the abbreviated style of drawing, known as Ryakugashiki and produced a number of woodblock print art instruction books in that style. It was radical stuff in it's time, and personally I find it as fresh and contemporary today. It's possible to the seeds of illustration styles yet to be imagined like Art Deco and the graphic character stylings of the 1950's all pre-echoed in Keisai's loose yet essential linework. In fact even today as a 2D animator I can see direct comparisons between his work and the way we try to capture a pose with a strong line of action. Keisai would have made a fantastic animator.

What is particularly stunning about his work is that it pre-dates Hokusai's famous Manga sketchbooks by around 20 years. Although Hokusai's Manga are clearly magnificent, and if you can get hold of one of the modern reprint copies you'll be richly rewarded, in the most part, compared to Keisai they are quite traditionally drawn and fit within a distinct Ukiyo-e styling; unlike Keisai who seems to have completely gone his own way.

Above is an example from Hokusai's Ehon, one of a number of pages in this book where he moves away from his traditional style to an abbreviated style directly influenced by Keisai's drawings.

I always find it fascinating to see who influenced artists I admire, and Keisai certainly influenced Hokusai's more abbreviated work.

In Vincent Van Gogh's letters he mentions how he wishes he could capture the essence of a figure in just a couple of lines, like in the Japanese books and prints. He doesn't say which artist he's referring to but it would either be Keisai or someone influenced by him.

Have a look at The New York Public Library's digitised images of Kitao Keisai's 1797 book "Chôju ryakugashiki" Animals in the Abbreviated Style.

More examples of his work can be found here. It's a Japanese site for the Fukuoka University Library, and you can view the images by clicking on the numbers (24, 25 etc) down the left-hand side. I have to thank Daan Kok for this link. He's working on a new book about Keisai's work: "Kitao Keisai. Masayoshi's Books in The Abbreviated Style: The Rise of The Ryakugashiki Genre, 1795-1813." He's said he wants to pack it with loads of illustrations, but it's still some way off completion. Daan's promised to let me know when it's published, and I'll flag it up here too.

Other examples of Keisai's work are hard to find, but they are used to illustrate "The Silent Firefly", a collection of Japanese love poems translated by Eric Sackheim and published by Kodansha in 1963.

Rough Print Design

2007-05-14T21:08:00.000+01:00

Here's a very rough sketch of the design I've decided to produce for the print exchange I've signed up for. The theme for the exchange is "3 Colours" and the format is Chu-tanzaku (13 x 39 cms).

This was my second design idea. I scrapped the first one except for the idea of a downward narrative that unfolds as you read the image top to bottom. In this case the journey of a cat through the Greek town to meet the old woman or Priest (I haven't decided which yet).

The format is a little wide at the moment so I'll have to adjust some of the detail when I redraw it. I'm going to keep the colours simple, and add a mosaic style border around the image in just the 3 colours.

There'll be 5 blocks to carve: the black key block, blue, a light red-brown, a rich yellow and a grey block.

Although the subject matter is vaguely Greek (based on memories of harbour towns on Greek Islands we've visited) I wanted to incorporate Ukiyo-e design ideas too. The tight cropping of the image, and the non-western flat perspective where things at the top of an image are considered to be further away from things at the bottom of the image, even though they appear to be the same size.

A long way to go before I've got finished prints in my hands. In many ways the design is the easy bit.

My First Print Exchange...

2007-05-13T17:09:00.000+01:00

I've signed up for my first print exchange with the Barenforum, the Internet home of international woodblock print artists. They run 4 print exchanges a year, in addition to a very popular New Year Animal print exchange based on the Japanese tradition of sending New Year cards. 30 people are signed on, with a number on the waiting list in case anyone should have to drop out.
I've made it onto the waiting list for Exchange #33 so I've decided to produce my print whether I get promoted onto the official sign-up list or not.

I thought it might be interesting to post progress reports on the design and production of the print, including any mistakes.

I'm really very new to woodblock printing, and my animation work takes up most of my time, but I'm fascinated by the technique and it's history, and the multitude of connections I'm finding between the subject matter and style of Japanese woodblock prints and books, and the traditional 2D Animation I so enjoy producing.

"Where have you been?" said Florence.

2007-05-13T16:35:00.000+01:00

Just a quick post to update on what I've been working on recently.
Remember "The Magic Roundabout", the children's series from the 1960's and 70's? Well, Dougal, Florence, Brian and the rest of the gang are returning to TV screens soon in a brand new CGI animated series. I've been part of the storyboard team and I'll be finishing my last episode in a week or so.
The series is being animated in France by Action Synthese, but the pre-production, scripts, storyboards and voice recordings are being handled by co-production partners Silver Fox Films in the UK, with director Graham Ralph at the helm.
I've 'boarded 8 episodes and they've been great fun to work on. (I'll list them in a subsequent posting, once the series is broadcast.) Graham wanted to capture the eccentricity of the original series, but develop the show to work within a 10 minute format for a new generation, and from what I've seen it all works beautifully. The storyboard artists were given a degree of freedom within the script to be visually creative and add elements of English eccentricity to sequences.
I used to watch the original series when I was small and to be given the opportunity to contribute to the continuing adventures of characters from my childhood has been a real pleasure and honour.

Animation Showreel goes live.

2007-02-20T18:23:00.000Z

In the last day or so I've started to upload my animation showreel onto my new YouTube Channel: "ANIMAISON: The Home of Animation".
At the moment there's just one video, I've added it here to save the leap. It's a compilation of short animated clips from work I've produced of the last few years. Originally this compilation formed the opening of the showreel I'd post out to clients so it seemed like an apt opening online taster. It's a little compressed for my liking so I'll upload a higher quality version in due course, file size permitting.
In the coming months I'll add more clips, linetests and maybe even a few snippets of a new personal project I'm developing.

Sherlock Fox and The Case of The Bust Bust.

2007-02-14T18:18:00.000Z

Here are a couple of images for a portfolio illustration using digital painting in Photoshop.
Below is the hand inked A3 black and white drawing...

... which was scanned into Photoshop. The whites were made transparent (I'll post how to do that sometime soon) and then I slowly started adding the colour, which each element on a new layer to allow for changes along the way.

This is the finished illustration:

All the colours were applied just using the Paintbrush and Airbrush tools, it's essentially painted using traditional techniques, but with the advantage that Photoshop allows you to manipulate opacity and other options with layers.

My first woodblock print.

2007-02-13T17:31:00.000Z

"Catching Snowflakes"

I thought I'd start my blog with the first woodblock print I've ever produced. It's small, only about 60mm high and a very simple image consisting of 3 Shina Ply blocks and 4 printings on Japanese paper.

It was made in early December 2006 as a Christmas card for family and close friends.

The blocks used were: black, blue (with a second printing of darker blue in the sky), and red (the pink tongue was printed with the red on the same block, and the jacket colour was produced by overprinting the red and blue.)

My hope is to produce more animal prints using traditional Japanese printing techniques in the spare time around my "proper" job.