Hiroshige's Fudo Falls in Oji, Japan

Copying was the main way by which Japanese artists learned, a young apprentice could spend 5 years copying their master before doing their own independent work. This painting is a copy I did of a Japanese woodblock print called Fudo Falls in Oji by Hiroshige. The size is much smaller here and the dimensions are more narrow because I was using a small piece of leftover paper. I wanted to see if I could reproduce the woodblock effects using watercolour and a brush especially the orange-yellow-green-blue green fade with overprinted shadows. I was also curious to see if the ground was in fact a yellow with grey overprint. The test was mostly a success- I confirmed that the wood block printers used at least two overprints (that is where they layer two colours, in watercolour it is called a glaze). The one thing I can not get right yet is the brilliant blue water seen in the print, it uses Prussian blue but I don't have that in my palette. Here, I tried a mix of cerulean, French ultramarine, and bloodstone genuine with a bit of windsor green, but the result was a flat dull blue. There are substantially fewer characters in this version too compared to the original print.

4 x 9" hot press, watercolour, Feb. 2020