Recently, I completed a print for an exchange, the subject of which was to be a fairy tale. I picked "The Boy Who Drew Cats," that I'll post below. The print is a woodcut, 8" x 10", printed on Rives lightweight paper. The other pic is my printing setup- you can just make out a squidge of the brown-black ink on the right.
THE BOY WHO DREW CATS a Japanese fairy tale
A farmer and his wife had many children. Their youngest son was small and weak, so they took him to the temple to become a priest. He learned quickly, but drew cats everywhere. The old priest finally said he could not be a priest, though he might be an artist, and sent him away with the advice to avoid large places at night, and keep to small ones. He decided to go to a big temple nearby and ask them to take him on.
The temple was deserted because a goblin had driven the priests away. Warriors who fought against the goblin were never seen again. A light burned at the temple at night, so when the boy arrived, he went in. He saw some big white screens and painted cats on them. Then he went to sleep, but, since the temple was large, he remembered the old priest's advice and found a little cabinet to sleep in. During the night, he heard sounds of fighting. In the morning, the goblin-rat was dead in the middle of the temple, and all the cats he had painted had mouths wet and red from the blood.
