Woodblock Wednesday - barensuji and haburashi

Barensuji is making marks with the baren, as you print, though other things can be used - fingernails, spoons, chopsticks maybe, or the end of a paintbrush ... lots of possibilities, depending on what you want to produce. 

I had no real idea of a desired outcome, and just plunged in, using the tool nearest to hand - the end of a paintbrush, and then a long matchstick. The block was quite dry, or maybe the paint wasn't wet enough? -

Lightly use the baren to put down colour, then make the marks

Another layer of colour obscured most of the marks
and introduced random texture

 A new print -

More vigorous marks

At this point I lost the plot and started fluffing around with an idiosyncratic version of bokashi (gradation) on the first print -

First pass with "brown pink" gouache - the block still had
some ultramarine so the resulting colour was a surprise

Second pass, extending upward just a little

On the third pass too, the gouache was stroked upwards

Put a frame round it, and it immediately looks "meant"!

Giving the second print another go, adding the pink-brown; the block was very dry again -

Print and its block

 Third blue print, from that block; still some of the green coming through -

Obvious brush marks on first pass

Mostly gone with second inking-up and printing

And a layer of hills, block too dry and colour too pale and totally unsuccessful! -

The sky wasn't printed, but it retains the textures from the first print

 Four prints can fill the time allotted.

The ochre mountain looks more like sand dunes -

Instead of doing the haburashi properly - using a stencil and toothbrush to spatter the block, then printing the spatters - I simply spattered the print, first with gouache straight from the tube (mixed with nori) and then with slightly wetter gouache, which makes bigger droplets.