Style combination · Contrasts

Nianhua × Ten Bamboo Studio Colour Woodblock

Both are Chinese colour woodblocks, but New Year prints are outlined, saturated, symmetrical and crowded with auspicious figures for every household, while the literati leaf is pale, sparse and made for the scholar's desk.

From the research on Ten Bamboo Studio Colour Woodblock (Douban & Gonghua)

Mix them and make something Nianhua Ten Bamboo Studio Colour Woodblock

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Nianhua, their arrangement from Nianhua, the finish from Ten Bamboo Studio Colour Woodblock. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

What each style brings

Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.

Nianhua & Chinese Folk Print Ten Bamboo Studio Colour Woodblock (Douban & Gonghua)

Type from Ten Bamboo Studio Colour Woodblock: Brush & pen calligraphy
Rotated & vertical setting
Colour from Nianhua: Full polychrome
Flat fields

Ten Bamboo Studio Colour Woodblock avoids full polychrome and flat fields: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.
Form from Nianhua: Stylised figuration
Folk & sacred symbols
Composition from Nianhua: Central symmetry
Horror vacui

Ten Bamboo Studio Colour Woodblock avoids horror vacui: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.
Surface from Ten Bamboo Studio Colour Woodblock: Painterly brushwork
Paper & letterpress bite

The type

Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.

Display · Ten Bamboo Studio Colour Woodblock

Tide

Kaushan Script, standing in for Brush calligraphy cut into the block: the poems and titles written for the 1633 Collection by about 120 poet-calligraphers, printed so that the print keeps the written stroke

Text · Nianhua

Woodblock pictures bought each New Year and pasted on doors, walls and kitchen shrines to invite luck and ward off harm: paired door gods, plump babies with carp, the Kitchen God, opera scenes and auspicious rebuses. A black keyline block is overprinted or hand-coloured in saturated red, green, yellow and pink, and compositions are dense, frontal and often mirrored in pairs.

Shippori Mincho; Nianhua used Kaishu and Lishu (clerical script) for auspicious couplets

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Nianhua, with a counter-accent from Ten Bamboo Studio Colour Woodblock. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Nianhua & Chinese Folk Print Ten Bamboo Studio Colour Woodblock (Douban & Gonghua)

#f1e6cf ground · 36%
#1a1a1a ink · 14%
#f2c230 accent · 18%
#b8352d accent · 14%
#d27a7f accent · 10%
#2f8a4e accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f1e6cf;
  --ink: #1a1a1a;
  --accent-1: #f2c230;
  --accent-2: #b8352d;
  --accent-3: #d27a7f;
  --accent-4: #2f8a4e;
  --font-display: "Kaushan Script", cursive;
  --font-text: "Shippori Mincho", serif;
}

Use it with care

Ten Bamboo Studio Colour Woodblock (Douban & Gonghua): Woodblock printing in watercolour (muban shuiyin) of this kind is still practised by studios such as Duoyunxuan in Shanghai and Rong Bao Zhai in Beijing and is on China's national list of intangible cultural heritage (木版水印技艺, VIII-77: Rong Bao Zhai 2006, Duoyunxuan 2008 and the Hangzhou Shizhuzhai Art Museum 2014): commission or credit their carvers and printers rather than passing off a digital imitation as a hand-printed edition, and never present a generated image as a leaf of the 1633 Collection, the 1644 Letter Papers or the Mustard Seed Garden manual. Have every inscription written or checked by a fluent reader, because image models invent pseudo-characters, and never make up a seal bearing a real painter's, collector's or studio's name.

The two styles

A densely decorated, symmetrical Chinese folk-style print shows two children holding coins above paired carp and guardian lions, surrounded by pink flowers, green foliage, red lanterns and long-necked birds. A yellow panel with black Chinese lettering sits beneath a rising sun at the top.

c. 1100–present · East Asia Nianhua & Chinese Folk Print Woodblock pictures bought each New Year and pasted on doors, walls and kitchen shrines to invite luck and ward off harm: paired door gods, plump babies with carp, the Kitchen God, opera scenes and auspicious rebuses. A black keyline block is overprinted or hand-coloured in saturated red, green, yellow and pink, and compositions are dense, frontal and often mirrored in pairs. 1626–present · East Asia Ten Bamboo Studio Colour Woodblock (Douban & Gonghua) A kind of colour woodblock printing begun in late-Ming Nanjing, made so that a print looks like a brush painting. Each picture is cut into many small blocks, one for each part and colour (douban). The water-based colour is partly wiped off to grade it and printed in overlapping tones, so washes take the place of a black outline; on deluxe leaves and letter paper, uninked blocks press white relief into the paper (gonghua). Bamboo, plum, orchids, rocks, birds and fruit stand alone on blank paper, with small red seals and a brushed poem, often on the facing leaf, in albums for learning to paint.