[Baren]: The mailing list / discussion forum for woodblock printmaking.

Baren Digest              Friday, 16 October 1998      Volume 05 : Number 314

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From: Graham Scholes <gscholes@islandnet.com>
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1998 08:08:15 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [Baren 1881] Re: Julio's website 

>I have visited Julio's website - and the work is beautiful - I look forward to
>seeing the "print gallery" once he gets that up & running --

I don' think I have ever looked in on this.
Please send me the site.

Graham

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From: Graham Scholes <gscholes@islandnet.com>
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1998 08:15:45 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [Baren 1882] New stuff. 

Just loaded new image on my site.
Also did some clean up to get things to run smoother.

Go to:
http://www.islandnet.com/~gscholes/

Cheers

Graham

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From: Phil Bivins <pbivins@mindspring.com>
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1998 13:02:33 -0400
Subject: [Baren 1883] Re: New stuff. 

Nice work Graham. Have you considered doing the light house at Cape
Hattaras, NC? 

Phil

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From: Graham Scholes <gscholes@islandnet.com>
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1998 12:16:52 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [Baren 1884] Re: New stuff. 

Phil wrote....
>Nice work Graham. Have you considered doing the light house at Cape
>Hattaras, NC?

Ummmmm....I'm getting to the point that would like to do something less
categorizing.
Seems I am getting a reputation as the 'light guy' who you can see coming
from miles away.

I guess it's better than having an odor problem.......

Thanks for you feed back.

Graham

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From: mkrieger@mb.sympatico.ca
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1998 17:09:27 -0500
Subject: [Baren 1885] Re: April's pigment recipies 

April wrote: 
>My crude system seems to work, but I am hesitant to recommend it to others without 
>more of a handle on the recipe!

I would like to echo the encouragement of others for April to record her
working methods for the Encyclopedia. More useful than any precise
measurements of quantities is your experience working with the
materials. There are all kinds of ways that I find myself using to
decide when something is the right consistency or how many times is
enough. These are the things I find more important in recipies, even
more than the exact quantities. When making paste (or bread) here in the
dry prairie winter, I use far more water than many recipies call for,
particularly those that hail from moist damp areas. Knowing if I am
trying to make a runny batter or a stiff one is far more useful.

Years ago, I got very frustrated trying to mix intense colors using the
instructions I had and watercolour so am greatly looking forward to
further discussion of the pigment question in <Baren>.

Mary Krieger

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From: David Bull <davebull@woodblock.com>
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1998 08:41:46 +0900
Subject: [Baren 1886] Re: pigments, copyrights ... 

April wrote:
> I have been using  a mixture of ready-made gum arabic 3:1 with glycerine
> for a binder, mixed 1:1 with pigment.  Plus a squirt of calcium carbonate
> in water to make the color more opaque, like gouache.

The question of transparency is interesting.  In the Japanese tradition
within which I work (and I'm speaking of the 'old' days - the techniques
used to make prints like the ukiyo-e stuff), all the colours are printed
with transparent pigment.

They used such pigments mostly because that's simply what they _had_
(usually vegetable pigments ...), but also because that's what suited
their method of printing - a black outline first, with overlaid colour
on top.  If the colours had been opaque, the outlines would have been
'buried'.

Another reason why we (in this tradition) don't use the calcium
carbonate that April describes mixing into her pigments is that colour
printed with such a material has a 'dusty' 'whitish' texture that is
completely alien to the 'pure' clarity of a transparent pigment.  (I
hope that doesn't sound 'critical'.  It's simply 'descriptive'.)

And also a third reason (not 'also' ... _very_ importantly), the colour
of the washi is allowed to come through when one uses a completely
transparent pigment.  The tint one mixes in the bowl is _not_ the tint
one will see in the print.  Each type of washi has its own very
particular colour, and this must be taken into account when mixing the
pigments.  

This is confusing for beginners.  They mix say, a light green.  The tint
in the mixing bowl is the one they want ...  When they then brush it out
over the block they are surprised to find that they can see barely _any_
green - the brown colour of the wet wood is all they can see - it
dominates the mix on the block.   

Then perhaps they do a test impression using a sheet of cheap 'copy'
paper (pure white).   Hmmm  ...  Looks pretty much just like the colour
in the bowl.  OK, time to start the print run (on washi ...)  The first
sheet goes on the block, and then is flipped over to reveal  ...  a
green of a completely different tone.  _This_ green is made up of a mix
of pigment and the 'base' colour of the underlying washi.

You have to mix thinking about the colour you want in the _print_, not
in the _bowl_.  The thinner and more delicate the colour, the stronger
the effect the washi has.  A very thick and deep pigment will of course
come out very similar to the colour you mixed, but a delicate one will
be quite different.

 From my point of view, this transparency is one of the great beauties of
the woodblock print.  

***

Dave Stones suggested (re Stadler's book):
> if Dave B wants to borrow it and add it to the library  ...

This is almost certainly going to be impossible.  The book is not only
still in print, it is readily available in bookstores.  There is no way
that the publisher is going to give the OK to reproduce it on the net
...

Did you also notice the news from congress last week - the passing of
the copyright revisions?  This is bad news indeed for those of us who
are interested in making a lot of this information available.  The
copyright term is now going to be life plus SEVENTY years.  This is
robbery!  

I cannot argue with the concept of giving a person control over his own
works during his own lifetime, and I would be willing to accept (under
protest) that his children should have a way to benefit from his work
... but SEVENTY years after death?  This is ridiculous.  Imagine for a
moment that I was trying to protect the material in my Encyclopedia ... 
I'm now 46, so I guess I've got another 40 years.  Add to this the
seventy years of posthumous protection ...  So this material that I'm
putting together wouldn't be freely accessible to the general public
until 2108.  Get serious!

Of course the instigation behind this is the 'big boys', the movie and
music copyright holders - people like Disney and the guys who own
copyrights to jazz standards and rock 'n roll hits.  It's a blatant
attempt to make copyrights 'permanent' instead of allowing them to
expire.  They're adding 20 years now ... then another 20 years further
down the road ...  

And because of all that scandal stuff that fills the newspapers, they
got this law through without anybody even noticing ...

***

Dave B.

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From: Graham Scholes <gscholes@islandnet.com>
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1998 20:18:42 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [Baren 1887] Re: pigments, copyrights ... 

Dave wrote....
>Did you also notice the news from congress last week - the passing of
>the copyright revisions?

>The copyright term is now going to be life plus SEVENTY years.  This is
>robbery!

>that his children should have a way to benefit from his work
>... but SEVENTY years after death?

To All

I can see congress has struck a chord.

Let me express the little guys point of view.......

My book is now under that protection.
Personally I see no problem with ANY period of time.  In Canada the time
period at present is 50 years and is being reviewed by committee in Ottawa.
I am sure that the time frame will match the Yanks.

The material is always available for re print on the approval of the owner
or their hiers. All one has to do is ask and explain how it will be used
and that it is not for resale or profit. If there is profit then royalties
can be arranged.

I am working on a new book now and am please to see that my grandchildren
may benefit.  All my children and grandchildren receive a match set of my
series of lighthouses......all prints, for that matter.  I believe they
should benefit from what Grumps .....ops ...... Gramps is achieving.

Regards,

Graham

Robbery?  You can't steal something if it belongs to you.

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From: David Bull <davebull@woodblock.com>
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1998 19:51:34 +0900
Subject: [Baren 1888] Re: copyrights ... 

Graham wrote:
> Let me express the little guys point of view.......  

> ... am please to see that my grandchildren may benefit.

Hmmm ... we obviously have quite a different point of view on this. How
long then Graham, should a copyright last?  Long enough to be passed on
to your children ... your grandchildren ... your greatgrandchildren ...
your greatgreatgrandchildren ...  ?  Where do we draw the line?

> Personally I see no problem with ANY period of time.

So copyrights should be _perpetual_?  We would now be paying royalties
to Beethoven's offspring every time we play one of his symphonies!

If this was the case, then _every_ word that has ever been written and
_every_ image that has ever been created would still be owned by
somebody, and we would have to pay for using it ... for ever and ever
and ever.

I think that copyright is a balance - it protects the original creator
and allows him to receive financial recompense for his efforts and
ideas, and yet it also allows society as a whole to benefit from the
creations of its members.  It _must_ serve both interests.  Putting an
expiry date on copyrights allows this to happen.

For myself, I would be happy if copyright was simply for the life of the
creator.  Of course I will try and provide for my children, but in the
future when I am gone, they will have to live their own lives.  If they
are intelligent and resourceful, they will succeed.  If not, they will
fail.  Their failure or success should not in any way be dependent on
_my_ abilities.

But I understand that most people are not so strict about this, and thus
I accept the idea that copyright can survive beyond the original
creator.  Fifty years didn't seem unreasonable.  But to push this longer
and longer, especially in this modern age when time scales have become
so shortened, seems too much to me - society is being hurt at the
expense of the individual.

And if I understand it correctly (maybe I don't, as the law is very
complicated), these changes are going to be applied retroactively. Items
that have fallen out of copyright into the public domain are going to be
'pulled back in'. I am going to have to yank some of those books out of
the Encyclopedia.

To whose benefit?  Absolutely no one.  To whose injury?  All of us.

Dave B.

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End of Baren Digest V5 #314
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