That's under consideration ... a kind of cat-like creature that jumps onto your desk. As it sits there purring while you stroke it, the tail swishes back and forth over the things on your desk ... What you don't know at the time is that the tail is a very strong magnet ...

David Bull Ha! Even better. Needless to say I look forward to these David :-]. Best of luck with 2017

Haha, I like that idea. Personally, what would scare me is a creature that uses up my electricity at night when I'm sleeping. At he end of the month, I would get a super expensive electric bill (and they are already expensive as it is).

Will Koziey-Kronas Modern hard drives aren't affected by magnets. Otherwise they would be wiped all the time by the magnets in the motor.

Try 2024 buddy

Heck with my highschool track record this yoky would only raise my GPA lol

Yeah, _now_ you put the interesting ideas on the table ... after we've wrapped up the set of twelve designs! But who knows; the idea of a second set of these is certainly something that could be on the table in a couple of years. I'll file this, and we'll drop you a note if we think this is something we could use!

Remember though ... we make of course many copies of it ... that's what printmaking is about - a lot of preparation, then ... bang! Out they go ...

David Bull haha what a pleasant surprise! Yes, I see. Still, the level of nuance in each print design continues to amaze me with every video I watch. Also, your production quality in each of your vids is fully noticed and greatly appreciated. Keep up the exceptional work!

Good guess ... but no, it's the Mail program complaining about an automated action that it wasn't able to complete ... :-)

Hah, I was going to say this myself; it would be a brilliantly 'meta' month if the character was Dave carving The Great Wave while a yokai sat on his shoulder :)

Hahaha, YES!!

There has never been 'practice' per se, but just constant repetition, making prints one after the other, and always trying to think of how it might be done better ... Might sound a bit pretentious, but if you follow that kind of path for more than thirty years, you eventually get ... 'competent'. :-)

oh i know, i`ve been at my trade for almost 25 yrs now and still a long shot to master. for practice i meant something along the lines, so i understand (only think my scrap pile must be bigger haha). sometimes things that should`ve left the door have ended on the scraps but that is another story, a daily fight btw what i can do and what i should do

The Keyboard Macro Yokai. HA!

It's not a problem; the wood isn't sliding around, because it's held by the stopper, and anyway, it's placed on a soft piece of cloth ...

Well, not a bad place to start would be to head to my (old) website at woodblock.com/ and scroll down to the bottom of the page. There are a 'few' resources there ... :-)

Not really enough space in the comment box for a thorough reply ... We cut with the flat side on the line as much as possible; if the lines are fine, and the direction doesn't permit that, we would cut the _outside_ of the 'V' first, so that when we then cut the line itself, the waste wood is thus free to 'fall away', thus reducing any chance of pressure stress from the bevel of the knife on the remaining wood ...

If you look for our video called 'Chibi Heroes woodblock print production' you will see that process shown clearly ...

What we're doing at this stage - while building the set - is keeping the verbalised part to a minimum. We are including with each print what we think is just barely enough to understand what is going on in the image - basically a single sentence. You can read these here: mokuhankan.com/yokai/collection.html We are thinking over some different options for how to expand this, and one of those is crowd-sourcing - having the collectors create stories for the prints based on how they themselves see the situation ...

I use the stronger wood glue for the key block because that one is mostly fine lines. I've found that using a weaker 'mucilage' leaves the paper tending to peel off the lines when I carve very finely. But for the colour blocks - mostly wide flat areas - a weaker glue is fine, and it also washes off much more easily. I'm using the type called 'arabiki gamu' here in Japan. Maybe it's made with gum arabic? It's not exotic at all ... just the standard stuff that school kids use ...

Thanks!

I straight up watch these videos to fall asleep, dudes voice is SUPER relaxing and sound of him carving wood is chill

what do you think his entire youtube channel is?

edcomics is that silly fad still going lol thought that creepy shit would of stopped by now

@@danielkerr4100 the purposely made asmr videos are creepy and cringe but rhe unintentional ones are great. Dave, Bob Ross and others have such a chill way of speaking it's easy to listen to and relax

We’re trying to keep the ‘exception handling’ to a minimum - that’s part of keeping the subscription cost down - but you are not the only person who has asked, so I guess we’ll probably end up with a number of people who want both prints together each month. We should be able to handle that ...

David Bull Ok great. I only asked due to my eco-conscious nature.

This is an interesting point; from an 'eco' point of view, you would be very hard-pressed to find any product on this planet as eco-friendly as ours ... when you take into account the energy used to produce it, balanced against the life-span of the product ...

David Bull Oh, I know first hand how you folks are as far as packaging and minimal plastic use, which is awesome. As I'm sure you know, when you have a passion for something, you tend to do it to the fullest as possible. I just wanted to ask and see what you'd answer with. Thanks a lot, Dave and I think I'm going to go ahead an d subscribe. I'm excited for this series along with the Miyajima print. Any news on that one, by the way?

We've done some testing on the Miyajima print, and the blocks look fine. Ayumi-san is ready to get started. But it will have to wait until she is clear of her 'normal' work - she's been printing subscription prints, Gift Prints, and now she's doing another batch of the Fox Moon Ukiyoe Heroes design. We're _desperately_ short of printers here now ...

The thin paper we use for putting the tracings onto the wood is the type known as 'gampi'.

David Bull thank you David-san. by the way I love this image of that girl it is so nicely made

It is indeed a Mamesuke ... given to us when we appeared on the 'Wafu Sohonkei' program a while back ...

David Bull Oh, you did? I should have guessed it. it's lovely seeing both things i know and like being connected !

@Martin Acosta Two questions ... let's answer them in random order. One 'no', and one 'yes'. :-) mokuhankan.com/subscriptions/yokai.html

We're using exactly the same technique that was used in the old days. They cut (and tested) the key block first, then used that to print out a number of copies, just as I did for this print. Those sheets (called 'kyogo-zuri') were used to work out the colour separations. I'm using a fluorescent marker, but in the old days they used a vermillion ink (painted with a brush). After the separations are made, they are pasted onto a series of blocks for carving.

No, but maybe I have an Uncle Sam ...

The carver in Kobe is indeed the young lady I mentioned back in the blog post. It’s Kawasaki Noriko, and she has been doing steady work for us now for three years. She and I alternated through the 1st Portraits series, and she has done all the subscription prints since then. The third carver on our team now is the young boy from Hong Kong who I introduced in this blog post: mokuhankan.com/conversations/archives/2016/02/kamisuki_proofing.html He has come along very well, and has now joined our team. He’ll be sharing the subscription work with Kawasaki-san this year (doing the Kyosai side of the key blocks …) So all of a sudden our situation is upside down - we’ve got more than enough carving talent in house, but nowhere near enough printers!

Maybe you could add their names to the 'The People' section of your Mokuhankan website (that's the first place where I looked after watching your Yokai woodblock print series video) ... Anyway, these are great developments on the carvers' front!

Long out of date, isn't it ... just trying to do 'triage' every day here with my time ... sorry!

I'm kind of a straight-ahead kind of guy ... and basically I believe in what I can see ...

David Bull thanks for responding.

sad man person me holding something priceless

Today it's over $2000 USD

There were actually plenty of people paying us with Bitcoin back then, both for subscriptions, and in our shop. But I didn't have the flexibility to keep it 'for investment' ... I have staff to pay, rent to pay, you name it. So of course I sold off all the Bitcoin we received just as it came in, converting it to yen to pay our expenses.

Well dang! If you'd have been flexible enough to hang on to it you could have bought 3 more shops haha!

@Meowl Night But spare a thought too, for the people who bought the prints. Can you imagine how they now feel - looking at a print on which they spent 1BTC ...

@@seseragistudio That's very true, I'm sure they're extremely prized possessions. Thanks for responding by the way and I hope things get back to normal for you all soon.