Recreating Hokusai's Drawings as Woodblock Prints | Hokusai Reborn

Woodblock printmaker Dave Bull and British Museum scientist Capucine Korenberg have been working together on a project to create woodblock prints from a series of unpublished drawings by the Ukiyo-e School Japanese artist Hokusai. The drawings come from a book by Hokusai; 'The Great Picture Book of Everything' (Banmotsu ehon daizen zu 万物絵本大全図). The method of creating such a book involved creating drawings that would ultimately be destroyed by carving through them as you created the woodblocks need to mass-produce a run of books. However, as this book was never published, the drawings survive.The question of whether these particular drawings were ever intended to be carved though, or whether they were actually reference drawings has never been answered. So Dave, his team and Capucine have selected 12 of Hokusai's drawings to painstakingly try to reconstruct what the 'final' pages of this unpublished book might have looked like, and in the process, tried to work out whether these drawings were ever destined for the chisel. 00:00 The Science of Japanese Woodblock Prints 01:19 Hokusai's Great Picture Book of Everything 01:46 Dave Bull's Hokusai Reborn Project 2:06 How Woodblock Prints are made 03:45 Dave and Capucine 04:56 How Dave Bull makes Woodblock Prints 5:24 Making the Prototype 5:53 Were the Drawings meant to be Carved? 7:04 The Solution 09:00 Difference between Drawing and Carving 10:30 Designers vs Carvers in Japanese Woodblock Prints 11:37 The Role of the Publisher 12:03 Fuzzy lines in Woodblock Prints 14:02 Drawing vs Print Comparison 14:28 Conclusion #woodblock #printing #japaneseculture