Terry Stringer

A portrait of New Zealand sculptor Terry Stringer rendered in mokuhanga. Reed's portrait blocks typically work through flat carved areas rather than hatched line, so the likeness is built from positive and negative shapes of inked tone against the white of the [washi](/glossary/washi). A keyblock would carry the outline drawing of features, with supporting blocks supplying hair and background field; [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) can be expected at the transitions, the pigment graded by brushing water and [sumi](/glossary/sumi) directly onto the wet block before [baren](/glossary/baren) burnishing. The water-based ink sinks into the paper rather than sitting on its surface, producing the soft tonal weight that distinguishes mokuhanga from western relief. As a portrait of a fellow sculptor — an artist whose own work concerns volume and silhouette — the print reads as a printmaker's translation of three-dimensional subject into the strict planar logic of carved blocks.