Ukiyo-e Woodblock Printing - Kabuki Samurai 3

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With this 3D printed woodblock Ukiyo-e technique, you can print as many beautiful pictures as your heart desires. Printing is a super relaxing and great way to spend the day, offering a wonderful creative outlet that's hard to put down. You just need to know someone with a 3D printer and have some basic art supplies on hand. These 3D files were carefully created by manually tracing lines and colour separating instead of relying on automatic software, this method produces warmer reproductions of the original artwork, like listening to a vinyl record rather than digital music. The result in my opinion is a more beautiful and true-to-life version of famous Japanese works. You can print your own pictures using acrylic, watercolour or even ink, on paper or cloth. This design is a stunning landscape print for a paper size of approximately 465mm wide x 300mm tall, but I recommend slightly larger paper size in order to have a lovely border. It consists of 5 'woodblocks' which are made from 2 x 3D printed panels each. There are 10 plates in total, each pair must be taped together with gaffer tape to make one 'woodblock' (see pic), hence you will have 5 full-sized plates/5 different colours. You can refer to the original for a colour reference but choose your own by all means. Sometimes the files are named with the suffix 'top' and 'bottom' to help you figure out which ones to tape together, sometimes A,B and C etc. I have also included instructions about which plates need to be used first and last, sometimes I number all the files to show the full order in which they should be used, this is so that when you start printing with paint you don't get a strong layer of colour hiding the layers beneath it. The plates will last for many many prints and if you use acrylic which dries in a few minutes, you don't have to wash the first layer of old paint off, in fact the surface gets a bit better after one layer of old paint has dried onto it, but you should wash paint off from subsequent print sessions to avoid build-up. I usually place them in soapy water and wash them all together only when I'm done with the session. 3D Print settings: I personally use 0.6mm nozzle and a 0.3mm layer for speed, but the regular 0.4mm nozzle with a 0.2mm layer will give you even better detail but takes longer. The prints generally require a 300mm x 300mm print size, if your 3D printer is smaller then just scale the plates down. But only scale in the X and Y directions, not the Z, you must maintain the same thickness. This is important for the ukiyo-e printing technique to work properly. Use printer settings that create 100% solids rather than honeycomb inside, the results will be better. Don't just set 100% infill setting to achieve a solid print. This will normally make the 3D printer do long stretches of print head zigzagging while it tries to do a very fine honeycomb structure, this causes lots of vibrations and noise. Instead, by specifying a high enough number for the 'top/bottom infill layers', higher than the number of actual layers required to print the panel, the printer is forced to do a more efficient back and forth movement pattern (just like it does for normal bottom and top layers) for every single layer, resulting in a better version of 100% infill, with smoother movement and less vibes. After printing each plate, use a sanding block and 120+ grit sandpaper to make the top surface really flat so it holds paint evenly. This does not take long if you have used PLA plastic, since it is quite soft. Note: The solid strip of plastic at the top does not need sanding, it is there for you to attach your paper using masking tape - see my instruction PDF called 'The Kit'. More info at https://bramtan.weebly.com More designs to come. Enjoy!