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I made this christmas card for some friends and family in a limited number. It's made in a 19th century Japanese, woodblock print style called 'ukiyo-e' ('pictures of the floating world'). The image's inspiration come from Hiroshige's and Hokusai's wonderful landscape prints of that time.

I hand drew the composition with pencil, then scanned it, printed it again, redrew it with a fountain pain to create the hard black lines, scanned it again and coloured it in PhotoShop CS3. So I didn't use the original woodblock printing techniques, mostly because it would have taken me much too long, plus I don't posses the skills to make all the woodcuttings (one for each color!).

The size on your screen is rougly the real life size it had: it's 12.7cm by 9.5cm (yatsugiri-ban) (3.75 x 5 inch), an official ukiyo-e print size.

The text on the image represents the words for the title (right top) and the artist (left middle) in japanese Kenji characters, as well as a forged seal of approval, which most of the prints from 150 years ago used to have before being allowed to be printed in larger numbers.