Miracles

While I have a couple of print ideas bouncing around my head,  I started this with no advance planning.  It started as a test block--I was testing the sharpness of the V-gouges I sharpened for class and the cheap, thin stock I was cutting--here they call it fromager (cheese?) wood and I haven't yet figured out what it would be called in English--cut cleanly with the just-sharpened tools. It's soft and has a prounounced grain but doesn't look like it will hold any detail.

From the test block came an idea, and I cut another block to match the first and a few test prints later I was at the printing bench. The two blocks are complementary--they're positive and negative but also coarse vs. elegant and they'll be working with and against each other as this print progresses.

 Here's the rough test of the cut block printed on bond paper--
and below, the same block, now cleaned up and printed in yellow, on good Japanese washi.

This is the first of many bokashi printings to come.
I printed a second color tonight but didn't have time for photos.

I set it all aside in the damp pack for a few days as I have more olives to pick (we're making olive oil) and until the rains start, I'm needed in the fields. But I'm hoping to start printing the second block in the next couple of days.

I'm still hopeful that this might come out and
happy as all get out to be printing on Echizen Kozo again.

A.