Is it Junk?! - Traditional Japanese Wood Block Printmaking from Start to Finish (ASMR)

Carving and Printing - "Junker at Sunrise" . The link to get the print is down below: . https://www.brandonjohnsonstudio.com . Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brandonjohn... . The title is a bit of a joke, I believe traditionally these types of boats were referred to as "Junks," or "Junkers," so it seemed a fitting opportunity to make a pun! Truthfully, I do not feel like this print is junk at all! I had been struggling with improving my printing skills over the last couple of prints, partially due to their complexity outweighing my technical skill and due to their relatively large number of impressions. To counteract that and to hopefully be given a good opportunity to improve my printmaking skills, I decided to take on this particular print! Enter one of the kings of Shin Hanga, Kawase Hasui. For anyone around the mokuhanga tradtion, they are undoubtedly familiar with the name and the artist! Born in Tokyo in 1883, he came of age as Japan was modernizing at a bewildering pace, yet his work lingered on temple eaves in snow, rain-darkened streets, lonely inns, and moonlit waterways. Associated with the shin-hanga, or "new prints," movement, Hasui helped revive the traditional woodblock print by infusing it with a modern sensibility: atmosphere over drama, solitude over spectacle, weather as emotion. What makes Hasui feel so enduring is the peculiar hush of his images. Even when they depict well-known places, they seem emptied of noise and vanity, as if the world had briefly stepped aside to let light and season speak. He traveled widely through Japan, sketching scenes that printers and carvers would later help translate into prints of remarkable tonal delicacy. The result is work that can appear simple at first glance but reveals, on longer looking, an almost novelistic attention to mood. In Hasui's hands, a roadside after snowfall or a lantern's reflection in wet evening streets becomes not just a view but a state of mind. Now for this print, we did not attempt to tackle one of Hasui’s dense 40 plus impression prints. Instead, the Shin hanga publishers of the day provided no shortage of postcard sized prints to work from in a reduced format. That is where we find this particular design! In total the print is composed of 10 impressions carved in cherrywood and printed on handmade washii. . Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brandonjohn... . Chapters . 0:00 - Cold open 0:35 - Transferring the Design 4:40 - Carving the Keyblock 8:50 - Taking initial impressions and color transfers 10:45 - Color Blocks 15:00 - Production Printing 24:00 - Drying and Final Print #mokuhanga #making #woodblock #woodblockprint #japanesecraft #japanesecraft #japaneseart #ukiyoe #asmr #woodcut #unintentionalasmr