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Message 1
From: Mike Lyon
Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2003 09:01:33 -0600
Subject: [Baren 23607] Re: to bevel or not to bevel
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At 08:50 AM 12/14/2003 +0900, David Bull wrote:
>... and by how my fine lines _always_ expanded once touched by the
>moisture of the pigment. Once I switched to the 'flat side against the
>good wood' method, such problems evaporated ...

AHHhhhh-HA! OK, maybe up to 2 1/2 now... :-) Thanks for this tidbit -- a
veil has lifted!

-- Mike


Mike Lyon
http://mlyon.com

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Message 2
From: Charles Morgan
Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2003 08:45:01 -0800
Subject: [Baren 23608] Re: to bevel or not to bevel
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Hello Dave,

At 02:46 PM 12/14/03 +0900, you wrote:
>Well, it's certainly not just me who knows about this 'flat side against
>the line' stuff ... This aspect is well documented, and indeed it's what
>the traditional guys working here still do for the most part.

It is amazing that the instructional material available to us here is so
strongly contrary to what you suggest. No doubt you could do us all a great
service by giving us the references to the documentation to which you
refer, and posting the relevant passages on the Baren web site. Of course
it may all be in Japanese. But perhaps you could translate it for us. Or if
that is too onerous, just scan it and email the scans to me. I have
Japanese friends who might be willing to do the translation. Who knows what
other gems we might find!

Reading old instructional material is always fascinating. For example, I
have the two volume set "The Tao of Painting", which is a translation of
instructions for Chinese brush painting from the 1600s. Have you seen it?
It makes for interesting reading. What a pity nothing similar exists for
Japanese wood block carving and printing. I wonder if the Chinese have any
instructional material on wood block carving and printing?

Cheers .... Charles

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Message 3
From: FurryPressII # aol.com
Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2003 12:28:07 EST
Subject: [Baren 23609] zinc plates and "v"'s
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zinc plates were your standard letterpress printing plate even woodengraved
blocks were made in to photo plates. It would not be suprising to see them
used in Japanese letterpress printing esp in the Mejie era.

off to sharpen my 1mm "v" no need to worry which side my bevel is on. right
or leftie

john center

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Message 4
From: FurryPressII # aol.com
Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2003 12:44:20 EST
Subject: [Baren 23610] thanks dave for the conversations on anything related to wood cuts ;-)..
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Dave Bull thanks for the lively talk on the bevel. If you do it the wrong
way are you picking the lesser of two bevels? I am sure glad i have my wood
carving as it takes my mind and body off of my toubles.

john center

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Message 5
From: Barbara Mason
Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2003 12:24:12 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [Baren 23611] bevel or no?
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Dave, Charles and all,
Thanks for the great information and discussion...little did I know that with my innocent question I would come back to 39 messages on baren. It has been fairly quiet lately, so it was wonderful to get all that info bouncing back and forth.

I admit I somtimes hold my knife more like a pencil...bad barbara, bad barbara.....but I am getting to be a better carver and I can sure "see" the work easier with the flat side against the wood. I too learned the "other " way at boot camp, but having Dave come the second year was such a treat and of course what ever he said, we did. And the results show a bit, both Wanda and myself have become better at what we do. Wanda does only woodblock so she has progressed much faster and her work is lovely. I am a process junkie so am doing monotypes, solarplates, linoblock with a little wood thrown in. Thus my learning curve is slower.

This is why I do not show any of my woodblocks, except for demonstrations. I just keep them for myself. I think the carving and printing are very soothing, almost like yoga. So it is fun to have someting you do that you love and need not part with. (what about all those exchange print?)

I was very surprised to see the Yoshida book with that zinc plate in the back...as a traditional printmaker I sure knew how to do this. But how to print it? How to compensate for the shrinkage in the wood and not the zinc on subsequent plates???? Do they adjust each plate??? No wonder the key block lines sort of disappear, they are constantly being over printed by the color. I sent a quiry to Dave about 4 years ago asking about this and he sort of shrugged and said he had no idea how they did it but had seen the blocks and they were zinc screwed to wood....I have always been going to try it. Now I am going to try solarplate instead. I have an image done by Mr Paul Binne in England I am gong to expose onto a plate and send to him...we are both experimenting with seeing if these plates will print with pigment and paste and we will have the adjustment problems with the color blocks done in wood. The advantage to these plates is they would accurately reproduce a brush stroke. We will
post our findings. We process junkies are always pushing the envelope. But this one carves the "right" way. What a great discussion.
Paul, if you are reading this, don't give up. I am going to get that plate done for you and before Christmas!
Thanks
Best to all,
Barbara


---------------------------------

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Message 6
From: ArtfulCarol # aol.com
Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2003 15:51:19 EST
Subject: [Baren 23612] Re: carving question
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Taking time out from todays' Celebration and mindful that it is not known
what may be tomorrow I have a few responses:
"If the blade were bevelled on both sides" was said to be not true to lilfe.
I was trying to closely follow the bevelling issue and got out all my
knives. I just noticed that all 4 knives had the bevel on the right side except
one and that had bevels on both sides. I dont know how that came to be, but
that is the knife I always use to try to make thin lines.
Being a Leftie complicates trying to follow directions but keeping the thumb
on the top of the knife is the easy part.

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Message 7
From: ArtfulCarol # aol.com
Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2003 15:54:26 EST
Subject: [Baren 23613] Re: bevel or no?
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OOps! Sorry ! I didnt mean to send that last message yet. It is unfinished.
I have been Celebrating too much!
Leftie
Carol

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Message 8
From: "April Vollmer"
Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2003 15:59:50 -0500
Subject: [Baren 23614] Demo at 55 Mercer
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Thank you Baren: two Baren-ers Bobette and Janet Hollander came to my demo
at 55 Mercer yesterday afternoon. They just happened to come at the same
moment, so we had a reunion of sorts, not having seen one another since
Kansas City!

I posted a TON of photos of the "Out of Nagasawa" show at
www.aprilvollmer.com/nagasawa in case you can't find the baren reunion in
the plethora, we are at:
http://www.aprilvollmer.com/nagasawa/pages/73%20Baren%20meeting.htm

Snow here, it is as bad as Rochester where I grew up, weather is usually
milder in NYC ;-(

April

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Message 9
From: Charles Morgan
Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2003 13:40:41 -0800
Subject: [Baren 23615] Re: bevel or no?
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At 12:24 PM 12/14/03 -0800, you wrote:
>I admit I somtimes hold my knife more like a pencil...bad barbara, bad
>barbara.....

Perhaps you should lighten up on the "bad" notion. The pencil grip is
advocated for various purposes in the book by Rebecca Salter "Japanese
Woodblock Printing" and the book by Keiko Hiratsuka Moore "Moku Hanga".
Both of these individuals were trained by well respected Japanese teachers,
and both have many, many years of experience, both as highly successful
artists and as teachers. (We could all wish that our work were being
collected by the Tate Gallery, the British Museum, the San Francisco Museum
of Modern Art, the Cincinnati Art Museum and the Cleveland Art Museum.)

Whatever WORKS best for you IS best for you. Experiment and figure out the
easiest way to get the results you want. ;-)}}}

Cheers ....... Charles

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Message 10
From: Barbara Mason
Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2003 14:22:57 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [Baren 23616] Re: Demo at 55 Mercer
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April,
thanks for sharing this...it looks like you had a great time! These works all looks so good, I wish I could see them in person. I particularly liked the pieces with the subtle blue and red abastact shapes that had such nice gradations in them. I liked all that white space around the shapes.
Good Job to all of you!
Barbara

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Message 11
From: David Bull
Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 08:32:35 +0900
Subject: [Baren 23617] Re: to bevel or not to bevel
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From Mike:
>> ... and by how my fine lines _always_ expanded once touched by
>> the moisture of the pigment. Once I switched to the 'flat side against
>> the good wood' method, such problems evaporated ...
>
> AHHhhhh-HA! OK, maybe up to 2 1/2 now... :-) Thanks for this
> tidbit -- a veil has lifted!

May I add something here without trying to sound too 'snide'? If you
peek at posting [Baren 11304], you'll see where your veil could have
been lifted more than two years ago! :-)

http://www.barenforum.org/archives/vol12/v12_1145.txt

> the wood that was compressed on
> each side of the knife blade will spring back later when you are
> printing, and your nicely carved fine lines will all expand ...

And don't tell me you were out of town or something and didn't read it -
in that same Digest there is a post from you! :-)

And isn't that another _giant_ topic - the idea that even when
information is right in front of us, even when we actually _read_ it, if
we aren't 'ready' to understand it, it won't 'take' in our minds ...

***

From Charles:
> No doubt you could do us all a great service by giving us the
> references to the documentation to which you refer, and posting
> the relevant passages on the Baren web site.

Charles, email is sometimes difficult; perhaps I'm over-reacting, but
I'm starting to hear more 'provocation' than 'content' in your replies
on this topic, so I think I'll quietly get off the bus at this stop and
let it go. But anyway, for what it's worth, in partial reply to your
request for 'documentation', here is a photo scanned from a book on my
shelf here. It's a book describing the process of re-printing a set of
old blocks of Hokusai prints that were found in the Boston MFA a few
years back. The blocks were brought over here to the Adachi Institute
for a new edition to be reprinted, but it turned out that a couple of
them were too damaged for the work, so replacements were carved. This
photo shows Horimoto Choshi - who coincidentally is the first carver I
ever met in Japan - working on one of those blocks.

It's a bit fuzzy - enlarged - but we can clearly see a right-handed man,
holding the knife with the point to the 'outside', and with the flat
side of the blade thus against the reserved wood.

http://barenforum.org/temporary/carving_outside.jpg

***

And that carries back to the point I mentioned just a second ago, in the
reply to Mike. Information won't 'take' if you aren't ready to receive
it. As I wrote in my newsletter in the last issue, I had a chance to
sit by Horimoto-san and watch him carve for a couple of hours back in my
earliest time in Japan. Did I 'see' that the flat side of the line was
against the good wood? Not at all. I didn't even understand the
'question', let alone understand the 'answer'. It had to wait until I
had plenty of experience under my own belt ...

Certainly makes me wonder what I'm still not able to 'see' even these
days ...

Dave

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Message 12
From: Charles Morgan
Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2003 18:17:10 -0800
Subject: [Baren 23618] Re: to bevel or not to bevel
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Hello Dave,

At 08:32 AM 12/15/03 +0900, you wrote:
>Charles, email is sometimes difficult; perhaps I'm over-reacting, but I'm
>starting to hear more 'provocation' than 'content' in your replies on this
>topic, so I think I'll quietly get off the bus at this stop and let it go.

What a pity ... It would have been nice to see the documentation to which
you refer. Absolutely no 'provocation' intended at all, I assure you. I am
sorry you seem so defensive. My offer to have Japanese friends translate
the historical material was genuine. As I said before, who knows what other
gems there may be hiding in such material. As you put it:

>Certainly makes me wonder what I'm still not able to 'see' even these days ...

I have no doubt that some DO carve the way you suggest. I appreciate the
effort you took to find the photo. And I have no doubt that many wonderful
carvers do NOT carve that way; the instruction books available today to
which I have already made reference certainly attest to that fact. I
suspect it was so even 150 or more years ago. But it seems it would be
difficult to settle the historical question at this point.

I do question the wisdom of labeling certain carving techniques as "wrong"
or "right". That seems to me to be very unhelpful.

Sitting flat on the floor to do your carving is no more "wrong" or "right"
than sitting on a chair at a table, even though almost 100% of the Japanese
carvers of 100 or more years ago did not sit on a chair at a table to work.
That does not make it "wrong", or "inauthentic" to sit in a chair as you
work. Carving with a u-gouge or a v-gouge is not "wrong", even if such
tools were not widely used 200 years ago. We do not use the same pigments
the early print makers do; and most of us do not make our own rice paste.
It is not "wrong" not to do so.

At the other extreme, it is not "wrong" to use a zinc plate etching to
produce a print, but I think we would all agree that it is not very
traditional. But there are no black and whites here. No doubt there are
many shades of grey.

What is important are the results that can be achieved using certain
techniques. Perhaps carving with the flat against the line makes it
possible to preserve finer lines. And perhaps some people will find it
easier to see what they are doing when they carve that way. Certainly those
are two good reasons to consider that method.

But others may well achieve the same results by carving in a different way
that they personally find easier. For example, some may find a different
method easier to learn. And some may find it easier to control the cut by
using a different technique. Certainly these are two good reasons to
consider a different technique.

I fail to see what is achieved by labelling either method as "wrong" or
"right". Each method is just a different tool we may employ under different
circumstances. The more tools we have and understand, the better artists we
can be.

And with that, I too will get off the bus. (But if you do come up with some
old instructional material, it would be really neat to have a look at it
... ;-)}}} )

Cheers ........ Charles

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