New Print completed

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?

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.

Grandad's Japanese Painting

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.

Elmer Fudd & Bugs Bunny's ancestors

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.

Christmas Print

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.

Monkey Magic. Journey to the West

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.

The Art of Japan Exhibition

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.

THE WOODBLOCK PRINTS OF ANDO HIROSHIGE

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.

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

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!

Adachi Institute Woodblock Videos

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.

900 Year Old Animal Caricatures by Toba Sojo

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.

Wisdom from the Past.

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.

Kitao Kiesai's Abbreviated Drawings

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.