Me and Hemingway

Cedar Waxwings in Juniper Mokuhanga. Edition in progress with 2.5 blocks printed. Copyright 2025 by Ken Januski

When I was in high school, at least my recollection is that it was high school, I used to read The Paris Reviews hardbound collected interviews with authors. I must have gotten them from the local library. Anyway part of the interview with Ernest Hemingway struck me: he said he only stopped writing when he knew what he would write at the start of the next writing day. Who knows why this struck me other than that it was a specific method. 

Today I am using that method but expanding it from a day to a year. I’m ending 2025 with 2.5 blocks printed for this edition of my new moku hanga ‘Cedar Waxwings in Juniper.’ I will print the other color on this block, thus finishing off block number 3 as well as blocks 4 and 5 in 2026. I will post something on the finished print then.

 

Drawn to Drawing

Watercolor studies of Blue-gray Gnatcatchers based on recent photos. Copyright 2024 by Ken Januski

Numerous watercolor studies of Solitary Sandpipers based on my photos. Done over 3 days. Copyright 2024 by Ken Januski

Sumi brushpen field sketch of Solitary Sandpiper. Copyright 2024 by Ken Januski

Sumi brushpen field sketch of Spotted Sandpiper. Copyright 2024 by Ken Januski

Sumi brushpen field sketch of Spotted Sandpiper. Copyright 2024 by Ken Januski

Watercolor sketches of Least Sandpipers from my photos. Copyright 2024 by Ken Januski.

Watercolor sketches of Least Sandpipers from my photos. Copyright 2024 by Ken Januski.

Sumi brushpen field sketch of Downy Woodpecker on feeder. 
Copyright 2024 by Ken Januski

Watercolor sketches of Common Yellowthroat. Copyright 2024 by Ken Januski

Two pencil drawings of Willow Flycatchers and based on my recent photos. My intent was to just draw what I saw and then see if I could identify it as a Willow by just looking at the drawing. Copyright 2024 by Ken Januski

 I have recently finished a new mokuhanga. But the last time I did so I posted about it but said that I felt bad about not writing a post about drawing and drawing from life and posting it first.

So to remedy that situation I'm posting all these drawings and sketches before posting about the new moku hanga prints. In my moku hanga I often talk about the composition, the orchestration of formal elements, the technique, etc., etc I do so because they are all important to me. But in doing so I don't mention how important drawing, especially from life, and capturing some part of life through drawing  are to me. It is sort of the primitive  counterpart to the more 'sophisticated' act of artistic composing. For many people I think they choose one or the other. I firmly believe in, and love, both. So without many words other than these here are some of my drawings of the last 3-4 months. Only one of them includes many details, that of the Willow Flycatcher. I did that because I wanted to see if I could identify the resulting drawing as a Willow if I faithfully copied my photo. I rarely do that. But I find that in carefully drawing what I see I often see what I had previously missed! It is more about observation than art. Most of the others focus on capturing a sense of the bird, especially of its shape and movement.

Orchestral Conductor or Courtroom Artist?

Three Brant, Three Black-bellied Plover. Moku Hanga. Copyright 2022 by Ken Januski.

Northern Cardinal on Tomato Cage. Moku Hanga.  Copyright 2023 by Ken Januski.

Boy it has been a long time since I've written here. That was not deliberate. The delay was due to the fact that almost as soon as I finished my newest moku hanga, 'Three Brant, Three Black-bellied Plover' at top I started thinking  about doing another moku hanga, 'Northern Cardinal on Tomato Cage', which is immediately above. It is not so much that they are related visually but that they are related in terms of the contradictions in my artistic motivation.

Sometimes I want to orchestrate my art work, like a conductor, matching this color here with that one there, this shape with that shape, etc., etc. It might sound very formal but I think it is also what gives both joy and delight to so much art. 'Three Brant, Three Black-bellied Plover' uses the same blocks that created the print below, 'Brant and Black-bellied Plover on Nummy Island.' It happened almost by accident when I used some overlapping color on the original print and liked what I saw. But I felt it didn't fit in with the general direction of the print so I got rid of it, thinking that I might come back to it in another version. That is how the print at very top, 'Three Brant, Three Black Bellied Plover', started. 

But I didn't want to carve all new blocks, nor did I want to re-carve the old. blocks in case I decided to print another edition of the first print. That meant that I had to set myself some odd formalistic limits in the second print. I wanted to use the same blocks, but with more overlapping color, without modifying the blocks. The answer was to print some of the old blocks upside down and right side up, and to selectively ink them, that is not print everything on the block. Oddly enough I was listening to some Bach fugues at the same time and realized that there was at least some similarity. I speak from the perspective of a non-musician who enjoys music. My understanding of a fugue is that it takes one or more 'subjects', then  modifies them perhaps playing them backwards or in some similar but creative and musical variation I wasn't trying to create a visual fugue. I couldn't even if I wanted to. But I was pursuing a formal method: theme and variation. If it is a fit subject for some of the greatest music in the world then it certainly is a fit subject for my art. 

All of this gets back to at least part of this blog's title "Orchestral Conductor"... This formal playing has been part of almost all art I've done, even as a child. Strict representation was never all that important to me. In fact representing the real world has only become important to me artistically as I've gotten older. Sometime this summer or early fall I did a sketch from life in the garden of a young Cardinal on a tomato trellis(second photo after this text). I loved it! It doesn't look like a photo, something I have almost no interest in. But it does capture at least for me the sense of seeing that young Cardinal. But is is so, so different in terms of artistic motivation than orchestrating visual elements like a conductor.

This motivation I think is a bit more similar to that of a courtroom artist. It's not the best simile in the world since a good deal of accuracy is wanted in a courtroom sketch. But because those sketches are done quickly from life they almost never look like a photo. But they can be exciting. In any case I find my now field sketches quite exciting, though not all are successful. Some are dreadful. That happens with working quickly, especially in ink, with a subject that may disappear at any moment.  But for me there is a tremendous artistic excitement in them.  I had that field sketch of the Cardinal of the tomato cage in my mind as I did the second version of the Brant and Black-bellied Plover. And I didn't want to post anything on that second version until I'd also done a moku hanga based on the young cardinal. That took another 3 months or more. I finished it yesterday.

You could say my work is erratic. Perhaps people do. But to me it is just a continuing synthesis of varied interests and motivations. I'm somewhere between and orchestra conductor and a court sketch artist using moku hanga as my medium.

Brant and Black-bellied Plover on Nummy Island. Moku Hanga. Copyright 2022 by Ken Januski

Young Cardinal on Tomato Cage. Field Sketch with Sumi Brush Pen. Copyright 2022 by Ken Januski.

 

Making Good Progress, or Not, with Moku Hanga

Original moku hanga of 'Ruby-crowned Kinglet on Honeysuckle - Winter 2021'. 5.75 x 8 inches on Nishinouchi paper. Copyright 2021 by Ken Januski.

I'm now approaching my 5th year of moku hanga, though since I've  done a fair amount of painting during that time, it's really not a full five years. I started off with just about the cheapest baren you could buy, eventually bought and used a plastic baren designed by Kurosaki and have replaced the face numerous times. But I always have a nagging unhappiness with some part of each print and normally it seems to be due to uneven paint coverage, though there are of course always just the plain old mistakes of one sort or  another that are always there.

In any case, and particularly after watching a video of Hideki Goto, master baren maker, from the 2107 International Moku  Hanga Conference, I decided it was time to buy a better baren. Eventually I bought a murasaki baren from McClain's Printmaking Supplies. I decided that a simple design was probably the best way to test it. I also decided to use a small 5.75x8 inch Shina block since it was just a test.

That made some sense, until I saw all my carved lines crumble in front of  me  as I tried to carve them. It reminded me of my first first Chinese brush paintings from many years ago. The ink on the brush seemed to almost leap from the brush to the paper where it created a huge blob, before the brush even touched the paper. Here the somewhat thin line seemed to break before I'd touched the carving knife to the wood. It's possible that the wood had dried out a bit  and that was the problem, but  mainly I think it was that I was trying to cut pretty thin lines for the  size of the wood.

So I  had to give up on that block and re-carve the block that included all of the lines. I spent more time testing the wood  and my carving abilities than I did testing the new baren. And I'm sure I would  have spent even more time on the carving if I hadn't  watched another  demo from  the 2017 International Moku Conference, this  one by master carver Shoichi Kitamura. Because he spoke in Japanese and was then translated I couldn't follow everything. But at one point he cut a line about a quarter inch from the fine lines he planned to carve. I'd always understood that this line was cut AFTER the real carving. He said that this relieved the pressure on the wood as he carved. And that seemed to be the case. By using that method my re-carving had none of  the broken lines of  my first line block!

As anyone who's read this blog for a while probably knows I'm not fond of bad use of the English language. Going forward(argh!!!) I try not to use redundancies, verbal barnacle-like accretions that clarify nothing  and just weigh down sentences, etc.  So when I use 'good progress' in the title  to this post I'm joking. What other kind of  progress is there? If it's bad it must be regression not progression. But the title  also explains  my feelings about moku hanga. Sometimes I think I'm making progress and other times I'm not so sure.

I've also been listening, thanks to McClain's Printmaking Supplies mentioning it in a recent newsletter, to The Unfinished Print, a series of  podcasts with interviews of  contemporary moku hanga printmakers. I think I've listened to four episodes now. And one of  the things that most struck me is  that, wonder of  wonders, I'm not the only person who finds  the medium difficult!!! But also I'm not the only one who can't  resist continuing with it.

Finally, after I'd finished re-carving the line block, I was able to concentrate more on color and using the murasaki baren to get better paint coverage. In this I'm very happy. It has worked quite well, at least by my standards. Some of the uneven paint coverage that remains is due less to the new baren than it is  to the fact that I'm using a floating kento. And I'm using a floating kento, rather than a kento carved into each block, because my blocks are so small that they really don't allow room to cut a kento.

That was mistake number two in my 'simple' test. Things are never all that simple when you use a floating kento! In any case the few areas of troublesome paint  were normally along the  bottom edge of the floating kento where I really couldn't bring the baren as far down as I needed to. As they say though  I'm now extraordinarily deep in the weeds so I won't pursue this. Suffice it to say that other than this little problem the new baren worked extraordinarily well and I'm happy that I purchased it.

In art it's often true that just about the hardest thing to do well is something 'simple.' I think I re-learned  that lesson here. I thought it would be a simple little moku hanga that would allow me to test the new baren. It was anything but simple! Still I am happy with the results.

It does however differ quite a bit from my print that will be in the Sumi-Fuison  Exhibit at the 2021 International Moku Hanga Conference.

'A Frenzy of Golden-Crowned Kinglets'. Original moku hanga by Ken Januski, copyright 2020.

Given the complexity of this print it seems like a huge step backwards to do something as simple as the new Ruby-crowned Kinglet print. In many ways  I think  that is true. But I felt like I needed to get more control of my paint application and this seemed the simplest way to try it! Though of  course it  wasn't  anywhere  as near as simple as I'd expected.

I'd encourage everyone to look at the online version of  Sumi-Fusion at the link above. It reminds me of just how varied and rich  contemporary moku  hanga is. I'm honored, and still a bit shocked, to have one of my prints chosen for inclusion in this exhibition!!!

Art Is A Favor That Is Given To You

 

Whimbrels at 2-Mile Landing. Moku Hanga by Ken Januski, copyright 2021.

Every time I'm in an exhibition I  try to advertise the exhibition, just as I'd guess most artists do, unless they are so well known that they don't  need to. But it is tiresome. After all I think my art and the art in the exhibitions I'm in  stand on their own. I shouldn't have to beg people  to  take a look at it.

I was thinking about that this morning in relation to  The Natural Eye whose official opening is today. If you actually spend a bit of  time looking at this exhibition, especially if you have the chance to see it  in person, you will realize I think how lucky you are  to have seen it. And  though I've only seen it online the exuberance comes through. It is both accomplished art and a celebration of nature.

There  are many people I'm happy to  say that want to celebrate nature. But the attempts don't always come off. It is not easy I don't believe. Can you make art that is as exuberant as nature itself? I think that it is  possible and I think you'll find much of it  in this exhibit.

As I said at the  top: art is a favor that is  given to you, just like nature, if  you have the good sense to give it a chance.