Dad

A restrained four-block portrait of the artist's father, distilling the subject to essential tonal relationships. With only four blocks, Lyon works within a severely limited vocabulary of tone and color, requiring careful allocation of each layer to describe form, shadow, and highlight. The economy of means reflects a long tradition in mokuhanga of achieving maximum expressiveness through minimal printing passes. Printed on [washi](/glossary/washi), the image benefits from the paper's natural warmth and slight surface texture, which softens the transition between tonal areas. The intimacy of the subject — a family portrait rather than a commissioned study — gives the work a direct, unguarded quality within Lyon's broader figurative practice.