Running To and From Line

White-eyed Vireo Mokuhanga. 9x12 inches on Torinoko paper. Copyright 2025 by Ken Januski.

 

I sometimes mention that I've been an abstract painter most of my life, though as I'm now in year 19 of naturalistic art and year 10 or more of printmaking that is starting to change. In any case in my artistic memory I remember when the only thing in my mind was pushing paint around and not paying as much attention to line. However drawing, which is primarily line, has also always been important to me.

It has seemed particularly important to me as a naturalistic artist, perhaps because there's more of a desire to capture the contour of things. In any case some types of printmaking lend themselves to line, like etching, engraving and perhaps lithography. And some do not. Carving into sometimes recalcitrant wood to produce a line is not the same as whipping a sumi brush pen across a piece of paper. One flows and the other doesn't.

Mokuhanga lends itself to shapes and color, but not really to painterly color. And though the expert professional carvers of the ukiyo-e period were incredibly accomplished in the sensitivity of the lines they could carve I certainly am not. And I think much contemporary mokuhanga, at least that I've seen in US, seems to favor shape and color over line. This is not at all surprising. Carving wood and getting sensitive, sinuous lines is quite difficult!!

My first notice of mokuhanga was contemporary work and that work focused on color and shape. I switched from linoleum block printing to mokuhanga partially due to my desire to abandon the oil-based solvents of so much of the ink I was using in linoleum  block printing but also because I thought the colors of linoleum block couldn't begin to compare with the richness of the water-based color of mokuhanga prints.

Though I struggled mightily trying to learn mokuhanga on my own I immediately saw the rich color possibilities. But I also felt I wanted line in my work. I not only wanted it; I needed it. There had to be a counterpoint to the rich color areas! Just one problem: I didn't have sufficient carving skills to do that to my satisfaction. Much of my earlier moku hanga tried to find a way.

Yellow-throated Warbler. Sumi brush pen and watercolor. Copyright 2025 by Ken Januski.

Yellow-rumped Warbler Eating Poison-Ivy Berries. Sumi brush pen and watercolor. Copyright 2025 by Ken Januski.

Willow Flycatcher. Sumi brushpen and watercolor. Copyright 2025 by Ken Januski

Willow Flycatcher. Sumi brushpen and watercolor. Copyright 2025 by Ken Januski

Warbling Vireo. Sumi brushpen and watercolor. Copyright 2025 by Ken Januski.

White-eyed Vireo. Sumi brush pen and watercolor. Copyright 2025 by Ken  Januski.

Often at the beginning of the year, probably because of often uninviting outdoor weather, I end up looking at the photographs I've taken over the year, taken for documentary reasons not artistic. I hate working from photos and rarely do. But this year I decided to work in sumi brush pen, wash from a waterbrush, and possibly watercolor as I looked through my thousands of photos. I really only wanted to notate ideas that the photos prompted in me. The fluidity of the brushpen, the ease with drawing washes out of their ink and the impossibility of erasure all gave me what I wanted: a quick sketch! The more I've done these, either in the field, or in my studio working from photos, the more I like them. They don't really remind me of photos but they're close enough to the subject portrayed to give me ideas about how to develop them in mokuhanga, or more rarely watercolor.

Again though there is that problem of line!!!! How could I get the same, often thin, sinous line from carved wood? Finally I decided to use the White-eyed Vireo sketch as the  source of a mokuhanga. I sharpened all my chisels, cut more deeply and cleared out more deeply than ever before, and hoped for the best.

I am happy with my newest mokuhanga, at top, of the White-eyed Vireo. It has given me the bold line that to me just seems necessary to balance the rich color of mokuhanga. This print has also given me the confidence to consider some mokuhanga using warblers as subject, something I don't recall that I've done in print in many, many years.