Japanese woodblock printing - again

New term - I'm so glad classes have started. Only the one this time, another stab at Japanese woodblock printing, which I tried out in mid-July and really enjoyed ... to the extent of going immediately to Intaglio to buy boards, paper, etc, and signing up for this course. (The materials are still in the bag! - but not for much longer.)

This time we're starting with a single-colour print, to get a feel for what's possible with cutting - the shina plywood we're using for the blocks isn't dense enough to hold thin lines with certainly. I've experienced this already, but fortunately my drawing is infinitely corruptible. Its elements are taken from a splishy-sploshy, rather frustrated, ink drawing which I rather like -

The drawing needed tracing to reverse it - and I remembered to flip the tracing over before transferring it onto the wood (using carbon paper), so that it would print the right way round -

 After a demo -

 it was time to start cutting. Blocks stay at college, but I have some at home to be getting on with...

As it was a lovely mild autumnal day, I walked over to the Tate, intrigued to see people (and a dog) on the foreshore -

 These are the stais giving access - the sign warns children not to play on them -

Instead of wandering round Tate Britain, though, I stopped for a quick coffee and had a chance to exercise self control by not visiting the jewellery shop - 

At home, I played with some other parts of the drawing, scaling them using Photoshop - 

Next step is to trace off some the squiggles in new configurations, avoiding thin lines, and see what happens.