CRAFTS: When in Tokyo, try making a Japanese woodblock print

"The Great Wave Off Kanagawa" by Katsushika Hokusai is a familiar image around the world, a premier example of a Japanese art form that turns up on mugs and T-shirts as well as museum walls.

For me, a few museum posters bought in high school and preserved like precious relics gradually evolved into an obsession with Japanese culture.

David Bull, who moved from Canada to Japan in 1986 to become a printmaker, owns the Mokuhankan studio and offers "print parties" to tourists.

Each woodblock has two shallow notches or slots carved along the bottom of the design as guides: a straight line on the left and a corner on the right.

[...] all of your instincts — or mine, at least — are wrong, as I found when I picked up the first piece of paper from the stack between by thumb and forefinger.

[...] you drop a glob of paste onto the block's surface.

Once the paper was in place, I picked up a round, flat stone with a handle and rubbed the paper hard.

Since each color may be used on different parts of the print, there's an example of each block posted on the wall so you know what spots to cover.

With many Western prints, the paper is the carrier of the ink; here, the paper is actually embedded with the pigment.