Montagne de Tabe

wood plate carving

printing the first block

printing the red seal on the final print

 Moku Hanga woodblock print. Sumi ink on Awagami Shiramine paper.
This print is inspired from the following sketch done at the break of day in the Pyrenees.

Bon An 2023

Bon An 2023
あけましておめでとうございます

The woodblock print that I make every year on the first days on January has become a ritual.

It is inspired by a sketch done at the top of Pic de Crabère during the Pass'Aran trek in the Pyrenees last august. 

This is a good way to restart a new printmaking year.

And this small print in a combination of all the things I love: mountains, sketching and woodblock printmaking.

L'estampe que j'imprime chaque année au début du mois de janvier est devenu un rituel.

Elle est inspirée d'un croquis fait au sommet du Pic de Crabère pendant le trek pyrénéen Pass'Aran en août dernier.

C'est une bonne façon de recommencer l'année en gravure.

Et cette petite gravure est une combinaison de toutes les choses que j'aime : la montagne, le croquis et l'estampe.

La Couronne Impériale クラウン インペリアル

"La Couronne Impériale" is inspired by a sketch I made from this series of 4000m peaks in the Swiss Alps in autumn 2017.
The four blocks of this woodcut were carved long before my trip to Japan.
Back home, I found it very interesting to print it. I could benefit from the addition of new knowledge about the printing process. And, not a slight advantage, I had no carving work to do.

The first thing I realized rather than learned in Japan is to make several passes of the same block to intensify a color or a gradient, or simply to correct the badly printed areas. In the example above, I intensify the smooth gradient (kata bokashi 片暈し) with a second pass with a straight line gradient at the top (Itchi Moji Bokachi 一文字暈し).

This first block was used another time to print the orange and yellow trees.

The second block was for the greens.

And was also printed twice in order to darken the foreground sap trees.

The third block is a mauve mountains skyline gradient. Just notice that it covers the light green forest on the slope of the mountain.

This looks obvious on these two pictures on the back of the sheet.

The fourth and last block is a kind of key block.

  It is a multicolor block that needed several passes to control everything.

This print is an edition of 8, used Holbein Watercolors and Kochi Roll paper.
Given that I printed this woodcut after my trip to Japan at the fall 2019, I signed my name in Katakana for the first time.

Sunrise on Mount Fuji

Fuji San - Bon An 2020

This year, to follow the tradition of the New Year's greeting card dear to printermakers, I could not avoid including a view of Mount Fuji that I had in front of me for 5 weeks.

This was also my first attempt of woodblock printing at home since the MI-Lab residency in Japan.

 This sunrise on Mount Fuji is a 3 blocks print, postcard size (15x10,5cm). The colors are japanese HansHolbein watercolors printed on Kochi paper.

 The first block is a vertical gradient (kata bokashi) from blue to yellow. I did only one pass.

 The second block is a new kata bokashi from left to right, from burnt sienna to dark purple.

The third block is a layer of shadow. A light purple bokashi that covers almost the entire volcano except the left ridge where the dawn sunlight comes from.

I must admit that the traditional text of the Japanese New Year is a stamp that I brought back from Tokyo.