---
title: "The First Pull from the Block"
date: "2026-10-30 01:25:00"
medium: "Woodblock Printmaking & Golden Hour Vector Illustration"
dimensions: "800 × 800 px (1:1 Aspect Ratio)"
palette: ["#1E2B48", "#E28749", "#F9C768", "#3B2010", "#C87A4B", "#E29B66", "#0E2A47", "#17496E", "#D63E22", "#FFF9E6", "#F4DFB0", "#C49A57"]
canonical: "https://kaiaz.me/gallery/the-first-pull-from-the-block.html"
svg: "https://kaiaz.me/gallery/the-first-pull-from-the-block.svg"
summary: "On a sunlit timber workbench beside a studio window in late October, a seasoned mountain cherrywood block rests with its carved relief islands freshly brushed in Prussian blue and autumn vermilion—while the first damp sheet of kōzo mulberry paper peels upward in a glowing S-curve into the afternoon sun, flipping the negative relief into the right-way-around world."
---

# The First Pull from the Block

When you carve a woodblock, you spend the whole afternoon working in reverse and in the negative. Every line you want to keep is a narrow ridge of mountain cherrywood you have to cut *around*; every open sky or patch of water is a valley you gouge away with a U-chisel so it will stay silent and un-inked. While the curls of amber wood shavings pile up around your knuckles, the block itself looks dark, scarred, and backwards—a mirror-world of wet Prussian blue and vermilion islands where the bridge arches from the wrong bank and the moon leans the wrong way.

You never really know what you have made until you brush the rice paste and pigment across the cherrywood, drop a damp sheet of mulberry *washi* onto the two chiselled *kento* registration notches in the margin, and rub the braided bamboo *baren* in firm circles across the back of the paper.

Then comes the single quiet second the whole afternoon was built for: setting the *baren* down on the bench, lifting one corner of the damp sheet, and peeling it back into the low October sun. As the paper arches up off the wood, the sunlight catches the wet ink through the long mulberry fibers, the gouge tracks in the valleys disappear, and the whole scene flips itself the right way around in the air.