Pen sketch of a Japanese village street in a sketchbook

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A pen sketch of a Japanese village street, drawn in a sketchbook, offers something a finished print cannot: the artist's first looking. Pen work like this was often done quickly, on the spot, with ink lines that record where roofs met the road, how eaves overhung narrow lanes, and where people paused in doorways. Sketchbook studies of this kind were valued by printmakers and painters as raw material for later, more polished compositions, so the page itself is a working record. Its loose, unfinished quality is worth noticing, since it shows the structure of a street before any color or refinement was added.

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