Big Wave

A wood engraving on Lemonwood, hand burnished on 28 gsm Tosa Washi Japanese paper with Cranfield Traditional Relief Ink.

Edition size: 50 (plus 5 no. artist’s proof)

Image size: 65 x 25 mm approx.

Paper size: 160 x 130 mm approx.

Price: £25 (sold unmounted)

This small wood engraving tests my ideas for illustrating waves and wave forms using wood engraving and a single colour to create tonal gradations to give volume and depth to the wave form. It follows on from my wood engraving ‘Surfing’ (of a Galway Hooker) and my mokuhanga print ‘Atlantic Swell’ which uses three colours of pigment and the bokashi gradation technique, unique to mokuhanga, to create volume and depth. It is printed in Prussian Blue ink, a favourite of mine. and, of course I could have called this Big Wave Little Block! Though that would not have fitted under the print from such a small block!

I currently don’t have access to a large relief press (such as an Albion press) suitable for printing large wood engravings such as ‘The Needles Lighthouse’ so I’ve been experimenting with thinner papers most suited to hand burnishing. I have a small stock of Tosa Washi I bought from Shepherds in London quite a few years ago which I used to print ‘The Crossing’, one of my earliest woodcuts. Although very light, it is very strong having 10% Kozo, long natural fibres from the paper Mulberry bush, and so, suitable for hand burnishing. It also absorbs the ink relatively easily without bleeding (it is internally sized) and allowing a crisp image to be transferred from the inked block. I really like the way the ink is absorbed into the body of the paper, unlike printing on Western papers where the ink sits on the surface, and this makes it easy to see how well the image has transferred from the verso of the paper.

July 2026