I thought it would be funny to make very purely digital images in Japanese woodblock technique. 
The contrast in time couldn’t be greater
one tap of a button for the computer
translated to a long time to carve some wood
then get paper dampened, 
then patient printing by hand, 
involving a gradual building up of colour over a few hours to days…
It was entertaining, and laborious, and then just a little bit overwhelming.
After a while I wanted to record the actual process rather than the final images
and then I started to worry about why I was trying to make perfectly registered images each time, when really the process of making the prints would naturally generate interesting frames.
So the eyeballs swivel around and then bounce out of the head, and I made some dark lashes and a kind of fluttery blink…
All in all I made 51 prints, but there are many more photos as they also record the build up of colour on each piece of paper.
It’s still very rough round the edges. I’m working on a new version with musician Eliot Kennedy, who has made a really upbeat and jolly tune!
Check out the vimeo file here
OR if the link isn’t working you can type in https://vimeo.com/237974015
June 27, 2017 at 1:56 pm
That made me smile!
June 29, 2017 at 11:50 am
Ahh thank you BarleyBooks!!
August 13, 2018 at 7:59 am
[…] Last year, when I was on a residency in China, I made a series of fifty water-based woodblock prints (mokuhanga prints) which ended up becoming an animation called Smiley Rock. […]