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What with all the news about the kakegami project recently, the senshafuda have been kept in the shadows a bit. But - at last! - there is progress to report. Seki-san sent me her first batch of roughs around a month ago, and I showed them at that time. I gave her my feedback and suggestions for the next step immediately, but she has been very busy and it was only a few days ago that I received the small package containing her finished drawings.

This is none too soon, as there is actually a deadline involved here. Printer Tetsui-san has been 'collecting' work from here and there, and around a month or so ago, he let me know that he had enough work to take him up to the end of July, but did have an opening at the beginning of August. Did I want to 'book' it? I certainly did.

But that meant that in order to have the blocks ready for him by August, carving has to begin 'enough' time before that. Carver Sato-san doesn't yet have an 'order book', and is still working on practice material together with his sensei Asaka-san, so he is flexible, but he does need enough time ...

So Seki-san's work has arrived in the nick of time actually. I wasted no time in scanning her outline drawings into Photoshop, and got busy creating the master tracings for carving. I took these over to Sato-san a couple of days ago, and he called me this morning to let me know things were already going ahead very well, and that he would have no problem getting the work done in time for Tetsui-san to start in August.

So we're up and running! Now ... which of those original sketches do you think will be included in this set? Well, one in particular certainly caught everybody's eye (including mine) - the woman behind a sudare screen:

Now that's a pretty rough concept, so here's a Photoshop 'dummy' of how we're going to make it work as a print (Please note that colours here are not 'real', and simply represent rough approximations of the sort of thing we will try ...)

We're going to split the key block on this one - the 'outside' part of the woman will be on the key together with the borders, but the 'inner' area will be on a separate block, printed in a lighter grey. Once the two sudare blocks are printed, the effect of being behind the screen should be interesting, we think ...

As for the vertical and horizontal lines of the screen itself, Sato-san asked me if I planned to have him split it between two blocks - one each for the vertical and horizontal lines. My reply? "No. You're going to carve it all on one. And it's going to look much better than what you see in this mockup. Let me show you what I want ..."