Untitled

This untitled woodblock sits at the intersection of Alex Mankiewicz's printmaking and his work as a graphic narrative artist. His illustration practice — published editorial work and comics — operates by the same logic as his prints: a sequence of decisions about which elements to include and which to remove until the image carries its meaning without redundancy. Mokuhanga enforces that discipline at the level of production. Each color requires its own carved block, so a print with five colors involves five separate cuts and five registered impressions; the medium does not reward indiscriminate detail. Mankiewicz's training in Kyoto established the technical foundation, and his subsequent illustration career in multiple countries refined the editorial instinct that governs which marks survive. The print is therefore not a hybrid object but a coherent one, in which printmaking and illustration are different scales of the same practice. As a single pulled impression on [washi](/glossary/washi), it foregrounds the surface qualities specific to mokuhanga: absorbed pigment, soft edges, hand pressure.