Baren Digest Monday, 16 December 2002 Volume 21 : Number 2061 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: G Wohlken Date: Sun, 15 Dec 2002 10:17:55 -0500 Subject: [Baren 20112] Webcam I enjoyed a few days of watching (on the woodblock webcam) Dave Bull and John Amoss in collaboration, as well as printmaker Mr. Shingo Euda (you can read about him on the Baren Mall webpages) joining them for a day of printing. It was fascinating watching the proofing process unfold. Too bad we couldn't hear what they were saying, but by their body english I could tell some serious deliberation was going on. From time to time Margaret (John's wife) would pass into view, and often Boots, the next door cat, stopped in for a nap or a little exploration. John and Dave, I'm looking forward to reading the full report. Gayle Ohio ------------------------------ From: David Bull Date: Mon, 16 Dec 2002 20:14:19 +0900 Subject: [Baren 20113] Re: Collaborative Print ... Gayle wrote: > I enjoyed a few days of watching (on the woodblock webcam) > Dave Bull and John Amoss in collaboration ... > John and Dave, I'm looking forward to reading the full report. Well, the 'full report' will be the _print_, when it is finished! (which probably won't be until early January ...) John and Margaret flew out a few hours ago, after a very packed nine-day visit. They were wonderful guests, very helpful and considerate all the way. They were 'good soldiers' - never complaining about the poor living conditions here (temperature in the workroom was 9 C. this morning ... around 48 degrees F.) As for the work, here's an outline of what went on ... John had previously sent me the 'final' of the hanshita (key block image) as a high-res .tif file. I had printed it out onto a thin gampi paper with my laser printer, pasted it down, and carved the keyblock - finishing up just before they arrived. They flew in late on a Saturday evening; most of the next day was spent in recovering from the very long flight, and also in working with me on the colour separations of the print. I had run off a few dozen proofs of the key block, and we used these to define what we thought were a good basic set of colour blocks (estimating about 30 impressions). The two of them then took off to Kyoto for three days to leave me to carve all the colour blocks (which actually took two days - I kept my nose down!). Once they returned to Tokyo, John and I sat down and started proofing. It took us most of two days to run an initial batch of six sheets of paper. Some of you were watching on the Webcam, and we enjoyed receiving your messages, both the ones you posted on the Webcam Message Board, and in private emails. We had no disagreements at all on the work - we both had a similar image in mind of where we wanted to go with this, based on John's mock-up done in Photoshop. We soon learned though, to _ignore_ that computer generated image, and just concentrate on making it come to life in _woodblock_ terms. The computer version simply served to ensure that we were both thinking in the same general direction. John mixed ... I printed. John mixed and added stuff ... and I printed. He listened to anything I suggested, and I did have input on this, but he pretty much gave the directions. For the last full day, we ran a second batch (4 sheets this time) - using the first run as our jumping off point. This run was of course much closer to what might be a 'finished' version. We do think it looks pretty good, but both of us think that if we had more time for more proof versions, we could almost certainly make it better. The overlaying is quite complicated, and the most difficult part of the job was understanding just what effect the 'early' colours would play in the completed print. We consistently underestimated the required 'strength' of these, and found ourselves having to come back and print them a second or third time to bring them up to the necessary level. The final count looks like 34 impressions, and it is going to take me a _long_ time to get the entire batch of 200 made. I'm going to do it in two batches, and as soon as the first batch is done, I will FedEx it over to John for checking and signing (I will also sign it); he will return them quickly so that they can be packaged and distrubuted to the waiting collectors. I intend to take a quick scan of each colour impression as the work progresses, and will (later) build a set of web pages that will allow you to understand the step-by-step progress. Are we still friends? Certainly! Would we do it again? Of course! Dave ------------------------------ End of Baren Digest V21 #2061 *****************************