Posted by at 8:55 PM, April 26, 2006
This print is from Hideo Nishiyama's rarely seen series of the national parks, "Yoshino Kumano Kokuritsu koen" (Yoshino Kumano National Park). Tourist boat excursion landing at the Kumano river.
The carver Nagashima, printer Shinmi. Published in 1960.
The original artwork was obviously a crayon sketch. It is astounding how well the carver and printer have worked to recreate the layered crayon texture. I cannot imagine how this might be done. Each pass of the crayon can be seen sitting atop of the one underneath. The rough texture of the crayon on the paper is also rendered perfectly. The surface of this print is quite smooth and the back shows baren marks. It is a woodblock print.
Click on the thumbnail for a closer view
This is totally woodblock?? Unfathomable how it was created to look so much like a crayon drawing. I really hope someone will come along and explain the method to us. I'm going to go stare at it some more...
That's quite impressive! It's hard to tell from a bitmapped image but it looks as if he could've used a slightly textured woodblock or a textured paper. I've created textured images by inking up those 'linoleum' flooring tiles and a more finely textured surface might give a crayon like impression if the ink and printing pressure were right.
Thanks for the post!
Wonderful image and so much fun to try to figure
out how it was cut & printed! Some pretty fancy
carving there.