Living Prints® Woodcut On-line

Tracing "Pine, bamboo and plum tree"

In the Preface, I asked people to visualize a 17th century printing house in Nanking, China, called the "Ten Bamboo Studio." The project on your screen is tracing a reproduction in the book of this title by Joseph Vedlich (Crescent Books, 1979). Hopefully this is not breaking copyright laws; I will illustrate the Chinese woodblock printing process as I understand it.

I started on November 24, 1995. In the first tracing, I forewarned on-line visitors that tracing may take a long time. In today's picture you can see clearly the bamboo leaves the Chinese master's image, somewhat faintly, through the thin Japanese paper.

After I  rub off the thin paper I'll be able to see the intricate details better. They're difficult to cut but that's part of the work of cutting.

• Japanese tracing paper over the reproduction of "Pine, bamboo and plum tree" from Vedlich' Ten Bamboo Studio, p. 76. The study of this Chinese woodcut is for depicting pine needles for use in the artist's own work, "My ancestors and me".

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©1999 Bill H. Ritchie, Jr. ritchie@seanet.com