Studio: international art (3.1894)

Woodcut Printing in Water-Colours

now commonly employed. Glue is mixed with mixing it well with the colour on the block de-
none of these colours (except black). But, as be- pends much of the brilliancy of the impression,
fore said, a small quantity of rice paste is sprinkled It is instructive to find that in Mr. Batten's ex-
periments he came to a somewhat similar
conclusion, by tentative experiments without
any knowledge of Japanese practice.

Those who have never seen the Japanese
colour-printer at work, whether at the Ex-
hibition at Knightsbridge some years ago
or in his native country, must remember
that the process has hardly anything in
common with English printing. Especially
is this noticeable in the application of the
colour by a brush, painting it in fact upon
the block, not applying it with a roller;
hence the monotonous level tint, which is
the ideal of European printers, is in many
instances not merely undesirable, but de-
liberately avoided in Japanese work. In
the majority of prints you find that the aim
of the craftsman has been directed to vary-
ing the tint; hence the subtle gradations of
tones and the merging of one colour into
another, which we imitate crudely by stipples
a woodcutter at woKK (fig. i) of the same pigments, are there literally the

"wash" of the brush; not a series of lines
over the colour on the block, and a brush soaked or dots more or less close together to intensify
with the same paste is used to mix it well with the or lighten the shade, but a graduated dilution
pigment. These five colours by no means exhaust merging imperceptibly through the whole range
the list. Mr. Tokuno gives description of some of the colour. The block being duly charged with
fourteen others employed in their
stead in various prints in his collec-
tion. But as many of these pigments
would be unobtainable in England, it
would be needless to describe them in
detail.

The Japanese attach much import-
ance to the grinding of the colours
and their admixture with water.
Skilled hands are able to produce,
from the same pigments, much finer
colours than unskilled hands can
obtain.

For the glue-water mixed with the
black water-colour, about a third
of an ounce of glue to three-fourths
of a pint of water may be taken as
an approximate proportion; it varies
according to the pigments and the
paper.

Rice paste is made by boiling rice-
flour with a certain quantity of water.
It is best newly made. Upon the
care taken in applying this and