Lorraine Botbol

This print depicts Lorraine Botbol and belongs to Andrea G. Artz's series of mokuhanga portraits derived from photographic sources. Artz's working method involves separating a digital portrait into a small number of tonal layers, carving each onto a woodblock, and printing them sequentially onto dampened [washi](/glossary/washi) with a [baren](/glossary/baren) and water-based pigments bound with rice paste. The technique yields a matte surface in which colour sits within the paper rather than on top of it, and permits [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) — the graded inking of a single block — to carry passages of soft modelling that would otherwise require many additional plates. Sharper key-block contours anchor the sitter's likeness against these graded fields. The portrait reflects Artz's broader interdisciplinary practice, which moves between photography, print, collage, and folded paper sculpture, and consistently returns to the human figure. Translating a photograph of a single named sitter into mokuhanga allows her to test the encounter between contemporary digital image-making and an analogue Japanese tradition.