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Edutainment > Articles on Art > Australian Artists >   <  36 Views of Green Island (2) - Manyana Beach  >  

Tom Kristensen

Manyana Beach
copyright Tom Kristensen, 2004

Tom Kristensen, born 1962, is a young artist from Australia who works in the tradition of Japanese woodblock printmaking. On this page, he writes about his latest print from the series "36 Views of Green Island ".

Here is the original text written by Tom Kristensen. Text and images are copyright protected and may not be used or distributed for other than private use without the prior consignment of the author/artist.

36 Views of Green Island

"These 36 views are presented in the Sosaku Hanga tradition: self-carved and hand printed, using Japanese tools, Japanese mulberry washi and traditional pigment colours. Each print is made from 4 to 6 blocks and printed in an edition of 25 copies."

Manyana Beach - No. 2

"Traditional coloured inks are formed from natural plant dyes or powdered mineral pigments. Ink is applied to a carved block and then mixed with rice starch. The mix is spread by brush and the block is ready for the washi paper. The back of the washi is rubbed with a baren and an impression is made. In this way the picture is built one colour at a time. The printed colours are translucent. The intensity of the colour depends upon the dilution of the ink. Sumi is the black ink made from lamp soot or burnt pine needles, it is dense and opaque, but it can be watered down to produce shades of grey.

In early Japanese prints, the colours were applied to areas defined by the fine sumi design of the key block. Printers sometimes experimented with overlapping colours, but more commonly the colours were kept separate.

In this view the grey block forms the foundation of the print. Where the grey is overprinted with a colour, a darker tone of colour is achieved. The grey block has been printed with only a small amount of rice starch. The ink has 'crawled' on the block and the resulting impression has a textured look known as goma zuri, or sesame seed. I have used grey goma zuri to create the open sandy texture of the beach. The white of the paper forms part of the colour scheme of the print, but I have also finished the print by adding a spray of white gofun to the black rocks. Gofun is made from crushed calcium-rich seashells, so it seems right to illustrate the dried salt and the tiny periwinkles that live high on the rocks."

Tom Kristensen
April 2005

More about Tom Kristensen

The artist was first discovered by Eric van den Ing, co-author of a classic ukiyo-e book "Beauty and Violence" and owner of Saru Gallery. After Eric van den Ing had placed Tom's woodblock prints on his online gallery, a few days later a collector had bought the whole set. Mr. van den Ing seems to have a "magic hand" for new artists. He was the first to introduce Paul Binnie in 2000 to a larger online community of friends of Japanese prints.

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