several thousands from single sets of blocks. The actual
wear in printing even of a fine line block is imperceptible, for the
pressure is very slight. Certainly hundreds of prints can be made
without any deterioration. But an artist who is both designing and
producing his own work will not be inclined to print large editions.[5]

[5] Further experience on this point is given in Chapter VIII on
Co-operative Printing.

CHAPTER VII

Principles and Main Considerations in designing Wood-block
Prints--Their Application to Modern Colour Printing

Until one has become quite familiar with the craft of wood-block
printing it is not possible to make a satisfactory design for a print,
or to understand either the full resources that are available or the
limits that are fixed.

In beginning it is well to undertake only a small design, so that no
great amount of material or time need be consumed in gaining the first
experience, but this small piece of work should be carried through to
the end, however defective it may become at any stage. A small key-block
and two or three colour patches may all be cut on the two sides of one
plank for this purpose.

There is great diversity of opinion as to the conventions that are
appropriate to the designing of colour prints. In the work of the
Japanese masters the convention does not vary. A descriptive black or
grey line is used throughout the design, outlining all forms or used as
flat spots or patches. The line is not always uniform, but is developed
with great subtlety to suggest the character of the form expressed, so
that the subsequent flat mass of colour printed within the line appears
to be modelled. This treatment of the line is one of the great resources
of the work, and is special to this kind of design, in which the line
has to be cut with the knife _on both sides_, and is for this reason
capable of unusual development in its power of expressing form. Indeed
the knife is the final instrument in the drawing of the design.

Typical examples of key-block impressions are given on pages 26 and 33:
they show the variety of character and quality possible in the lines and
black masses of key-blocks.

The designing of a print depends most of all upon this development of
line and black mass in the key-block. The colour pattern of the print is
held together by it, and the form suggested. In the Japanese prints the
key-block is invariably printed black or grey. Masses i