Japanese wood block printing

Over the weekend I have attended a two day workshop at DCA in Dundee. This was to give me an insight into the processes used within Japanese wood block printing. The course was ran by Campbell Sandilands who previously studied in Dundee and then spent several years living and studying in Japan. It has been an interesting experience as I learned many things about the history, culture and tools used in tradition wood block prints. Due to the technicality and time consumption of the work we were introduced to the basics using a ply board on which we carved on both sides. Even this task was fairly time consuming which emphasised how much work must go into a full print using several blocks with numerous prints on each.
The main purpose of this task was to see what I could learn from the process. I realised that this process could be used to create textures or backgrounds for my work as there is a uncertainty about how the image will look until you lift the board back off. This can lead to unexpected results which I find interesting. The thing that kept on popping into my mind over the weekend was how could I repeat this digitally. I figure that working with shapes such as the ones I cut and then trialling different brush types could possibly lead to me creating something similar although I may also have to layer in textures. This would be to try and recreate the marks in the ink that are caused by the baren  which is the pad used to burnish the paper against the surface of the inked block.
We created several different prints on differing papers to see what happened. Below are the carvings I made on either side, my first trial of colours, a single image of the character and my final print which combines both sides onto the same print. The single image and my final image are my favourites as the single image seems to have a sense of movement, the final has a better sense of balance with the colours where the flower and leaves seem to work best out of all the prints I produced.