I carve wooden printing blocks to make woodblock prints.

To make a printing block, first I sketch the design onto the wooden block and print it onto paper. Then I carve the wooden block and print the image onto paper again. I create a printing block through the repetition of this process.

My method of making wooden printing blocks isn’t so different from the orthodox method, except that I make the block at the same time as I am working with the prints. In other words, I develop the prints and the blocks concurrently.

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There really isn’t a practice of dealing with both the print and the woodblock side-by-side as you would in photography with the positive and negative images. But I like to treat the block and the print as equals and draw the image out as they interact with each other.

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While I speak of “drawing the image out”, it can be noted that in woodblock printing the image that has been carved into the wood gets faithfully reproduced on the paper. But there is more to it than that. In carving an image into the block, we can then duplicate it on paper.

But this printed image is the reverse of the image on the block, and this is part of the peculiar nature of woodblock prints, one which sometimes produces unexpected results.

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The method that I use takes advantage of this special feature of woodblock printing, as well as the characteristics of the raw materials of the process (a wooden block, paint and paper), and as such, although you are creating things in line with your own will, rather than purely making the image, the process feels very close to one in which you are drawing an image out.

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私は、「版木」と「版画」の制作 をしています。

制作方法は、モチーフを版木に写し、紙に摺り、さらに版木を削り、また紙に摺る．．．という作業の繰り返しです。

オーソドックスな木版画の 制作方法とほとんど変わりませんが、版画を摺る行程で、同時に版木も作ります。つまり、版画作品を作ることと平行して版木作品を作るのです。

写真でいうところの「ポジ」と「ネガ」のように、「版画」と「版木」も並列して扱われることはあまり無いと思いますが、私は、版と版画を横並びにし、双方を行き来しながらイメージを引き出します。

「イメージを引き出す」と言いま したが、版画は、版に刻んだイメージを、型通り紙に写し出してくれる一方で、版に刻まれる凹凸、複写可能であること、紙に写す時にイメージが反転すること、といった版画特有の性質を利用すると、時々予想しなかったイメージが現れることがあります。

そういった版画の特質や素材（版木、絵具、紙）の性質を生かした制作方法は、自分の意志で制作していながらも、作る、というよりは、イメージを引き出す、という感覚に近いと思います。