Hawk

A second hawk image, presented as a separate print rather than a further pull of the first. Returning to the same subject and recutting or reorganizing the blocks is characteristic of sosaku-hanga practice, where the artist's full control over carving and printing makes this kind of variation a natural part of the working process. The two hawks together let Ono test different solutions to the same problem: how much of the bird to give as silhouette, how much to model with bokashi, how to place the figure against the negative ground of the washi. Compared with the dense urban scenes of his prewar leftist phase, these animal subjects show the more contemplative line of Ono's postwar output. His historical writing on the creative print movement makes clear that he saw this kind of repeated, exploratory engagement with a single motif as one of the methodological strengths of sosaku-hanga, distinguishing it from the division-of-labor production of commercial ukiyo-e.