He also carries ball-bearing barens like the one Hanga Girl described above. You can purchase them from Japan through Woodlike Matsumura online: I've had mine for years and the bamboo leaf is only now starting to wear away in small patches. Marc, I use the moku hanga traditional baren (covered in a bamboo leaf) and love it. It's possible that you could get some "baren suji" with oil-based inks (darker marks made by the ball bearings as they pass over the ink). I should also mention that I work in the moku hanga method, so I'm not sure how it works with oil inks. I highly recommend it if you can spare the cash for it. The ball bearing baren is maintenance-free as long as you keep it clean and dry. A traditional bamboo-covered Japanese baren, also pricey, is also pretty great and you can get them in different weights / strengths, but there's some maintenance involved, the worst being that they need to be re-covered with bamboo from time to time. The plastic baren makes a fairly weak impression I find, so I use it only when I want a light touch. It's like the power tool of barens and delivers very strong pressure without the pain. I have a ball-bearing baren and I love it. However, the moku hanga style seems to require more skill to get the ink distributed evenly. I think the waterbased ink must be attracted to the dampened paper. but from my brief experimentation with the moku hanga watercolor inks, I noticed that the moku hanga style does not seem to require as much physical pressure to get the ink to pick up. I mostly use western-style oil-based inks. that barren had a padded surface which made it difficult to produce enough pressure for my style of printing.) (I actually like the spoon slightly better than the speedball barren, when I borrowed one. It's extremely cheap and works very well for my purposes, but it admittedly can get to be tiring for the hands. I know some people that use the ball bearing baren for moku hanga style and love it. I have the plastic one and I didn't like it much. This link also shows a plastic baren with nubs on it (pla-baren) that might be an option too. I would think the ball-bearing baren would work great, but I hate to shell out that kind of money without knowing for sure. ![]() I don't have a press at home and my Speedball baren is going to give me carpal tunnel syndrome. ![]() I then transfer ink from the inkwell to the moistened block using a 1-inch brush, followed with a flat, rectangular surikomi (stencil) or hanga (print) brush held perpendicular to the block to distribute the ink with small, circular motions finished with gentle vertical or horizontal strokes.I'm wondering if anyone has tried these expensive ball-bearing barens for block-printing. It is very important for me to mix my own colors in order to achieve the subtle color gradations in my woodblocks. I mix my pigment, rice paste and water to achieve the desired color value and opacity. I use the reduction process, where one block is carved and then printed multiple times, reducing the print area of the block with each color run. I begin carving away the block for the first color run, starting with the lightest colors and values, progressively deepening in color to add depth and contrast. In the studio, I create a master drawing to transfer the image onto multiple blocks, as I did with March Ascent, demonstrated in this article. My process begins outdoors with sketches and watercolor studies that become the roadmap for the woodblock. Leon Loughridge, “Culebra Morning, 7/20,” Woodblock Print, 18 x 12 in Creating a piece
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