Scrapers are edged tools used in copper plate printing for various purposes such as removing burrs produced when carving the image on the plate, adjusting the tone, deleting the carved lines and finishing the plate mark. Since the cross section of a

Epoxy adhesives harden as a result of a chemical reaction at room temperature between the base resin, liquid epoxy resin, and a polyamine curing agent. They are used by squeezing an equal amount of base resin and curing agent from their respective tu

Karabake is a brush which is always used dry to blur the paint in Japanese paintings. The width varies in the range of 1 sun (approx. 3cm) to 5 sun (approx. 15cm) and the bristles are made of the coarse, strong deer hair. The handle is finished en

Watercolor tape is a gummed paper tape used for stretching paper which has been soaked in water on a board or panel. The tape is fixed firmly onto the frame material, such as a panel, so that the paper will not crease. The tape can also be used to fr

A lead sharpener is a tool used to sharpen the lead on a lead holder. (Some models also double as a pencil sharpener.) Generally, lead sharpeners sharpen the tip of the lead using an abrasive medium. Typical file-type sharpeners carry a plate file

Instant adhesives (superglue) are made from cyanoacrylate as their primary ingredient and rely on chemical reactions. They bond by reacting to tiny amounts of moisture on the bonding surface, or in the air, and curing. While they are capable of induc

An eraser shield is a thin sheet of stainless steel or plastic with slots and holes of different shapes. They are designed to allow erasers to be used through them to erase lines and text without removing lines close by which do not need to be (or sh

Emery is an abrasive made from granulated garnet used in the production of stone lithograph plates to polish the plate surface. It is a pale brown mineral compound consisting of silicate, which contains magnesium, iron, manganese, calcium, etc. Al

A file is a tool used for making a surface smooth, rounding off the corners and scraping off unwanted parts by rubbing against the material. It can be made of metal, paper or cloth. A file has a countless number of small teeth on its surface. This is

A burin is a steel carving tool with a wooden handle used to create the drawing in wood engraving and copper plate printing. It has a cutting tip shaped diagonally at 45 degrees on one end and a wooden handle on the other. Burins are mainly made i

A saw (for woodworking) is a tool consisting of a blade of metal with a sharp toothed edge which is used to cut through a piece of wood. Generally, Japanese saws cut on the pull stroke whereas Western saws cut on the push stroke. Two types of saws

A squeegee is used in screen printing to force the ink through the image section of the screen (holes that have not been blocked out) to transfer it onto the support. In stencil printing, it is a tool that affects the finish of the work directly.

When engraving curved lines with a burin on a woodblock or a copper plate, a cushion (French: coussin) is placed under the woodblock or the plate to enable it to be rotated. This is because a burin can only be moved in one direction. Therefore, in

Nikawanabe (glue pot) is a pot used in the production of Japanese paintings for dissolving glue with water and as a container that stores this solution. Normally, the nikawanabe is placed in a container of hot water to heat the content indirectly

A nikawasaji (glue spoon) is used in the production of Japanese paintings for stirring and dissolving the glue in the nikawanabe (glue pot) and for spooning up the glue solution to pour into the palette. There are copper and brass types and the ha

A renpitsu is a brush made by joining together several quality saishikifude (coloring brush) in a row to form a single brush resembling a hake. It is used to apply a soft wash over a wide area, add water and color to a painting, and create a blurred

Wood glue is a water-based adhesive containing vinyl acetate resin. It hardens when the water contained in the glue is absorbed by the wood or evaporates. It is mainly used on wood, paper and cloth. It is not used on plastics and rubber. Being water-

Tsuketatefude is a brush that is mainly used for drawing with sumi ink and is also called mokkotsufude. In ink paintings, there is a technique called mokkotsu (a type of coloring technique in Chinese paintings) in which objects are rendered withou

Styrofoam glue is a type of vinyl acetate adhesive. It is used for bonding two pieces of foam polystyrene together or for bonding polystyrene with cloth, wood and paper. Instant adhesives and plastic glue contain solvents that dissolve foam polystyre

Mortars and pestles are tools used in the production of Japanese paintings to grind mud pigments and chalk. They are also used for grinding granular hydrated alum into powder when making sizing solution. Mortars and pestles are made of white ceram

A sharpening stone is used to sharpen various cutting instruments such as carving tools used in woodblock printing, burins used in wood engraving, and needles and scrapers used in copper plate printing. When carving tools and burins are blunt or c

There are two main ways of joining objects together. One is through physical methods such as tying, nailing, sewing and fastening with Velcro and rivets. The other is through chemical means using an adhesive. Natural adhesives such as Japanese lacque

A triangular scale is a ruler that has a 3-lobed cross-section with 6 different types of scales on the edges (2 on each face) used for measuring and preparing scale drawings such as blueprints and maps. It is also called an architect's scale. Some ty

Ebake is a brush used in Japanese paintings (nihonga) to ground or paint large areas in lines of a uniform width with sumi ink or nihonga paint. The width of commonly used ebake is between 1 sun (approx. 3cm) and 5 sun (approx. 15cm) available in

Synthetic sponges are made of plant fiber (cellulose) and used in making lithograph plates and in printing. It is important for them to be soft because they come into direct contact with the plate surface. At the same time, they must have large po

A rocker (berceau in French) is a tool for producing a regular pattern of tiny holes (and burrs) on a mezzotint copper plate. It is used to prepare the master plate by creating countless holes on the plate surface. It consists of a sharp, arched b

A roulette is a copper plate printing tool for making areas of regular lines and dots on the plate surface by rolling and pushing the toothed metal wheel on its tip. The shape of this toothed wheel is cylindrical (drum shaped). It has small protru

A burnisher is a rod-shaped steel tool used in copper plate printing for adjusting the tone, making corrections to the plate and various other purposes. The shaft of a burnisher is gently curved towards a pointed tip and is shaped like the strip o

A needle is a metal rod with a pointed tip which is used mainly in copper plate printing to score drawings on the plate. The cross-section of a needle's tip can be round, triangular, diamond-shaped or rectangular. Each type produces lines of a sli

A feather duster is used to remove eraser shavings from pencil drafts and drawings. Because the fixing power of pencil on paper is weak, if you try to dust off the shavings with your hands, the oil on your hands could rub off on the paper and spoi

Lithographic crayons are crayons with a high oil content used in lithography. They are available in pencil and stick (like Conte crayons) forms. Both types come in varying degrees of hardness so they should be selected according to drawing conditi

A dosa sizing brush is a brush that is used to apply dosa (sizing) when preparing for and working on a Japanese painting. It is mainly used for sizing washi and silk canvas so that the ink does not run, and for gilding with gold or silver leaf. Th

A dermatograph is a colored pencil made of rolled paper and is used in block printing instead of a lithographic crayon when doing lithographs. A dermatograph is made of paper wound into a pencil shape. Unlike a conventional pencil, it is unique in

A screen frame is the frame on which a mesh (made of tetron, nylon, silk, etc.) stencil for screen printing is stretched. The frames come in various sizes but they must be slightly larger than the actual image to be printed (image size) because a squ

Rubber spatulas are used mainly for copper plate and wood intaglio printing and for removing excess ink from the block. They generally comprise a wooden handle with a piece of rounded rubber on the end or a squeegee large enough to fit in the hand.

Kakiron (touch up pen) and keshiron (eraser pen) are pen-type tools for making corrections to finished plates used in metal lithography. Since both these instruments rely on chemical reactions, they do not require conventional surface treatment on th

Bread and gauze are often used for correcting and changing charcoal drawings. When used on paper, charcoal produces grainy lines due to friction. Because charcoal does not contain any ingredients to fix the color to the surface, the lines can be r

Charcoal is a drawing instrument made by carbonizing branches and offcuts from tree trunks. Due to its softness, it can create various effects such as delicate tones, shades and gradations, enabling a wide array of expressions despite being a monochr

Watercolor paint is a water-soluble paint made by mixing mainly pigment with gum arabic and other substances to enable it to adhere to the support element. There are transparent and opaque (gouache) types with different covering capacities. Watercolo

Watercolor brushes enable the artist to make optimum use of the properties of watercolors in which the moisture content demonstrates a rich variety of expressions. The brush tips are mostly made of animal hair which have good water composition, flexi

A corer is a wire instrument for removing the core from artist charcoal. Charcoal is made by carbonizing tree branches or offcuts from tree trunks. Those made from branches have vessels running through the center that turn into a different type of

Erasers and kneaded erasers are deletion tools we use to correct or change lines, etc., drawn by pencil or other writing instrument. Plastic erasers, which are also used for general writing purposes, are in springy block shape and can erase text b

Flat brushes have a slightly wide, flat base and a tip made of quality sheep wool trimmed in a straight line. They are used to lay down a flat wash over a relatively wide area. They come in various widths, ranging from size 0 (approx. 0.5 cm) to a

Printing bloc Woodcut printing block Carving tools Chisel Kento chisel Sharpening stone Shallow and very shallow half round chisels (Various cleaning chisels) Printing tool Ezara Waterc

A ruler is a stationery item and drafting tool used when drawing lines, as a guide for cutting, and for various other uses. It is available in different shapes and materials, depending on the type of lines the user wishes to draw. Some rulers have me

Third angle projection is one of the methods of orthographic projection used in technical drawing and normally comprises the three views (perspectives): front, top and side. Orthographic projection is a method of expressing a three-dimensional object

Wet and dry is one type of sandpaper used for sanding with water. Although sandpaper generally has no water-resistant properties, wet and dry paper will not tear if exposed to water and the adhesive will not dissolve. Sanding with water reduces the f

The Vernier caliper is a measuring implement used when it is difficult to take ordinary measurements, to measure such things as the outer diameter of screws and bolts, the inner diameter of pipes, etc. and the thickness of plastic boards, among other

Sandpaper uses paper or cloth as the base material with an abrasive bonded to the surface. It reduces and smooths the surfaces and corners of timber and plastic, etc. by rubbing. The term “sandpaper” can refer to sandpaper, emery cloth or waterpro

Sea sponges are natural sponges mainly used in watercolor painting to adjust the amount of moisture on the brush or the painting, and as a painting implement to create effects that cannot be produced using a brush. They are aquatic invertebrates a

Pencils are drawing instruments comprising a solid core of mainly graphite and clay baked in a thin tube and inserted into a wooden sleeve. Pencils have a diverse range of uses including as everyday writing implements, for drawing, Croquis and drafti

Watercolor palettes are flat, smooth boards or saucer-shaped and used as plates in watercolor, gouache and similar works to arrange paints, mix colors and adjust moisture content, etc. The shape and type of material in a palette depends on the typ

Measuring sticks and art grids are used for understanding form and checking layout when drawing a subject in front of you such as a person, static object or scene. The measuring stick mainly provides height, size and other ratios for the objects i

Conté crayons are a drawing medium made of powdered natural pigments compressed into a stick, and are also known as carbon chalk. They lie somewhere between a pencil and charcoal in terms of hardness, with a subtle balance of hardness and softness th

Canvas tacks are used to pin down the canvas on a stretcher frame. A stretched canvas covers the sides of the frame and tacks are driven in evenly along the edges to fix the canvas with equal tension to the frame. By removing the tacks, a canvas c

Digital Versatile Disc (DVD), or DVD-Video as it is known, is an optical recording medium capable of recording videos over an extended period. Its media composition, geometry and data recording and reading methods are basically the same as those o

CD-Rewritable (CD-RW) is a rewritable medium which uses a metal phase transitioning material in the recording layer (specified in Orange Book Part III) and records information by converting the crystalline state of the material to a non-crystalline (

CD-Recordable (CD-R) (specified in Orange Book Part II) is a recordable medium that uses organic dyes such as azo, cyanine and phthalocyanine on the recording layer and records information by degradation and dissipation of the dye with heat from a la

Drawing ink is produced by using pigment as a colorant mixed with a fixative such as glue in soot. It is known for its resistance to water and light and for its strong fixing properties. It is mainly used in the preparation of blueprints that are to

The straight edge ruler, also known as a bench rule, is an implement used to draw and cut extremely accurate straight lines. This is done by running a pencil or other writing instrument, or a cutter or blade, along the edge. Generally, measures are m

A ruling pen is an instrument for drawing lines of even thickness in drafting, tracing and lettering. In Japanese, it is referred to as a crow's beak and as this name suggests, it is made of two metal blades in the shape of a beak between which the i

Masking tape is mainly used in adding color to paintings as well as in painting and airbrush work to protect areas that are not to be painted and to produce different colors side by side. Most of the masking tape frequently used in art and design wor

Pen ink is the ink used for general writing purposes. The most commonly known types today are the long used blue-black ink as well as the pigment-based carbon black ink and water-soluble dye colored ink, both of which were developed to overcome the s

Drafting tape is coated with a weak adhesive and is mainly used to fix paper to drafting boards and to hold lettering, etc. while designing and doing layouts. It is also used to hold photographs and stencil templates in place on mounts and painting a

Solvent, mainly made of organic ingredients, is used as a thinner to adjust the concentration of paper cement. It can also be used to peel off pieces of paper that have been pasted together with paper cement. Solvent is sold in cans but it is usef

DVD-R (DVD-Recordable) is a recordable medium with an organic dye in its recording layer which does not allow data to be rewritten or deleted once it is written on the disc. DVD-RW (DVD-Rewritable), on the other hand, is a rewritable medium with a me

At the dawn of the history of the computer, paper punch tape and cards were used as recording media but today, methods such as magnetic, optical, optical magnetic and semiconductor recording are used in the materials and devices for recording informa

A floppy disk is a removable, rewritable magnetic recording medium comprising a disk-shaped polymer sheet coated with magnetic material on the front and back, encased in a jacket. It is sometimes also referred to as a flexible disk. In the 1970s,

Scissors are the implements we use to cut (shear) paper, cloth, soft plastic and leather, etc. by pinching the material between the upper and lower blades. Unlike cutters and other bladed instruments where the material is sliced by applying pressure

The French curve is a template used to draw different types of curve. It is called a cloud template in Japanese because of its resemblance to a cloud. The French curve enables the artist to draw curves that would be difficult to achieve with a compas

DVD-RAM (DVD-Random Access Memory) is a rewritable medium which uses a metal phase transitioning material in the recording layer, has hardware defect management and identical specifications to magnetic recording media. Consequently, data can be delet

DVD+R (DVD Recordable) is a recordable medium with an organic dye in its recording layer which does not allow data to be rewritten or deleted once it is written on the disc. DVD+RW (DVD Rewritable), on the other hand, is a rewritable medium with a me

Generally, the term CD refers to a CD-DA (Compact Disc Digital Audio), but it is also a general term for an optical disc with a diameter of either 80mm or 120mm and a capacity of up to 700MB. CD-ROM, Photo CD, CD-R, and CD-RW are some of the logos an

Paper cement is an adhesive whose primary components are latex and a solvent, and is used in the creation of designs, layouts, and presentation boards in order to attach paper to paper. Because it is not only easy to bond materials, but also to peel

Among the different types of semiconductor memory recordable media, flash memory is the general name for a group of products including CompactFlash, SD memory cards (including mini and micro), USB data storage drives, which are made up of EEPROM (Ele

An inch (in.) is a unit of measurement used to express length or distance in the imperial system. Other units in this system include feet (ft.) and yards (yd.), which also express length or distance, and pounds (lb.), which express weight. 1 yard =

A Magneto-Optical Disc (MO) is a removable, rewritable storage medium, which comes in both 5.25-inch and 3.5-inch sizes. The 3.5-inch size is the more commonly used size with personal computers. The discs come in six different sizes of storage capaci

When making a sketch or croquis, an artist places a carton—a piece of thick cardboard—under the support medium (paper) to hold it in place. In French, “carton” means cardboard. There are two basic types of cartons used for sketches: a “single” typ

A printmaker uses an ink slab, basically the equivalent of a painting palette for printmaking, to mix and roll ink. Most ink slabs are made out of marble (natural or artificial) or thick chamfered glass (approximately 1 cm thick). Hard, heavy, and

When making a sketch or pictorial composition, an artist uses an easel to hold the support medium, carton, or other similar object in place at a comfortable height. Although there are many types of easels designed for different sizes of support me

An oil dipper is a small container that holds painting oil medium for oil painting. Oil painting often uses drying oil, volatile oil, and other painting oil mediums to alter the stretch and luster of the actual paint. Just as they have quick acces

Oil paint brushes have fine tips that mix well with oil and let artists take advantage of the viscosity, transparency, and other unique qualities of oil paint. With fine tips made of various types of animal hair and a diverse range of shapes and size

Oil paint, mostly made by kneading together pigment and drying oil that sets the pigment in place, features a distinctive luster and transparency that only oil can create, a degree of plasticity that enables expressive touch and piling, and a gradual

A wood panel is a veneer plywood-based support medium reinforced with squared timber and used in all types of painting, including oil. In pencil sketches, watercolors, nihonga, and other formats that use paper for their support media, stretching damp

Brush-cleaning fluid is a solution made from refined oil and used to clean oil paint brushes. To use brush-cleaning fluid, pour enough of the fluid into your container (a brush-cleaning container) to submerge the heads of the brushes in the fluid. Wh

The woodblock brush is used when making woodblock prints, for mixing ink, paint, or glue on the block, and spreading it out in a uniform fashion. There are two types of brush: a round one, which resembles a shoe brush, and a patterned hand brush. The

An oil paint brush-cleaning container is filled with brush-cleaning solution and used to remove oil paint from brushes. Generally, the brush-cleaning container is a small bucket of a moderate depth, allowing it to be filled with cleaning solution

A brush cleaner is a container used to wash paint and dirt from brushes for Japanese painting, watercolors, acrylic, and other water-based paints. There are several types of brush cleaner available. They vary in capacity and portability, depending

The chisel (chōkokutō), a carving knife used in woodcut printing, is a wood-handled, steel-bladed tool for carving into printing blocks. Chisels take their names from their tip shapes. In general, there are four widely used kinds of chisel: the cu

The line-drawing brush (senbyō fude) does precisely what its name suggests: it draws thin lines. Artists can select brushes made from the furs of different animal species or fashioned with different tip shapes depending on the type of lines they want

The mizubake (Japanese water brush) is a Japanese brush made for painting water onto large surfaces, different from brushes that use paint. The mizubake is chiefly used in stretching, in water-based paintings (watercolors and Japanese paintings), and

Watercolor paper is a general term for any exclusive paper used in drawings that employ water-based paints such as transparent or non-transparent watercolors. Because the expressions of watercolor paintings are created by the manner in which the w

A triangle is a drafting tool used to draw accurate parallel lines, vertical lines, and other angled lines. Generally, two right-angled triangular pieces of differing angles form one set. On one piece, the angles are 90°, 60°, and 30°; on the other,

Coloring brushes in Japanese art are round painting brushes capable of full-textured pigmenting. Artists can use them freely for purposes ranging from applying delicate colors to making bold strokes on wide surfaces. They are thus widely used in a va

Artists use kumadori brushes, also known as bokashi brushes, to create bleed effects in ink or paint. Unlike other brushes, artists do not directly apply paint with a kumadori brush. Rather, they load the brush with water and apply it to still-wet pa

Ezara dissolve paints much like a palette does. Artists across all fields of water-based painting from Japanese painting and woodblock printing to watercolor and poster color use ezara, which are usually made of white ceramic or plastic to help disti

Drawing paper is very versatile and one of the most common surfaces used for pencil and pen drawings, watercolor, and crafts. Drawing paper has a fine to medium surface texture with moderate stiffness that gives it a unique quality of feel. Paperm

Damp rags (or uesu) called yawara are used in woodcut printing. Yawara are laid beneath a woodblock to prevent shifting when a printmaker burnishes paper against the woodblock. In woodcut printing, the printmaker applies a considerable amount of f

Also called makijaku in Japanese, a tape measure is used to measure lengths of straight and curved lines several meters long. Tape measures, which are made of steel, plastic, or cloth, have lines on the tape to mark off measurements. Often, they are

A printmaker uses a machine called a press to apply pressure to plates and paper, thereby transferring ink from the plates to the paper. The press is said to have been invented in the 15th century when a grape press was adapted for letterpress pri

Kent paper is paper that derives its name from the Kent region in England. In most cases it is made entirely from chemical pulp. It is very smooth, has a moderate amount of elasticity and thickness, and is well-suited for many drawing materials and w

Canvas stretching tools (canvas pliers) are pinching tools used when preparing a stretched canvas as a medium, particularly for oil painting. When stretching the canvas (painting surface) onto the wooden frame, attach the canvas using tacks (canva

The construction of a stretched canvas, which is used primarily in oil painting, is (as the name implies) a canvas that has been stretched and affixed to a wooden frame. Artists can easily stretch canvases themselves in various forms and sizes depend

A canvas is a medium for oil painting made of cloth woven from the fibers such as flax, the top surface of which has been treated. The word can also refer to such a cloth after it has been attached to a wooden rectangle (a stretched canvas). Compa

Tweezers are called "pinsetto" in Japan, which adopted the term from the Dutch word "pincet." With tweezers, users can manipulate small parts that are difficult to handle with their fingers or parts that they want to keep clean and free of fingerprin

The baren is a burnishing tool that printmakers use to transfer an image on a printing block to paper. The printmaker applies pressure with the baren to burnish paper placed on a printing block so that the paper picks up ink from the block. The ba

The hakobi, made from finely split bamboo skin that is gathered on a stick like a broom, is used in water-color woodcut printing applications to dissolve paint and transfer the dissolved paint to the woodblock. In use since the days of ukiyoe, printm

Tracing paper is a translucent type of paper made by refining and processing pulp, the main raw material in paper, to a high degree. It is also called tōshashi or torepe in Japanese. The translucent quality of the paper lends the medium well to tr

Starch paste is a water-soluble adhesive primarily used to bond sheets of paper. It is made from the starch of grains, potatoes, or other plants, and was used as early as the Heian Period (794-c.1185). Before hardening, starch paste is a highly visco

Spray adhesive is an admixture of an adhesive synthetic rubber (such as acrylic resin-based rubber) and a volatile organic solvent (like isohexane or acetone) packaged together in liquefied or compressed gas form so that the adhesive can be sprayed.

A stapler, commonly called a "Hotchkiss" in Japan, binds together sheets of paper by punching a three-sided, rectangular-shaped staple into the stack. Before the advent of the stapler, there were issues with binding together several sheets of pape

Shaped into a semi-solid stick shape, a glue stick lets you apply glue without getting any on your hands. It also makes it easy to control the amount of glue used, which is difficult to do with liquid glue. To use the glue, contained in a plastic tub

Made of fine polystyrene foam bubbles, styrene board is used to model architecture and interior spaces and other presentations or displays. It is lightweight and can be cut and processed easily with a cutter. Styrene boards come either with or withou

The compass is a drawing instrument used for drawing circles and arcs. One of the two legs of the compass ends in a needle, which the user places gently on paper to keep the compass in place. The other leg has a writing instrument on its end. Using t

PM pads are a type of paper often used in design layout work. Its thickness is comparable to that of copy paper. The name "PM pad" comes from "pastel marker," but the paper is used with a wide variety of writing instruments and drawing materials. Bec

A T-square (T-shaped ruler) is a tool used in hand-drawing such things as architectural drawings. As the name suggests, a T-square is shaped like the letter T. The shorter piece at the top (the head) and the longer piece that makes up the body (the b

Essential oils, including turpentine and mineral spirits, are used as solvents when making one's own varnish, because of their efficacy in adjusting the viscosity and thickness of oil-based paints, accelerating drying, diluting drying oils, and disso

Drying oils, including linseed oil and poppy oil, are used in painting in order to adjust the thickness of the paints, improve their stretchability, increase the fixativity of the paints to the surface, and give oil paints their characteristic luster

Art solutions (extracted oils) are supplementary paint solutions used when painting with oil-based paints. They are able to enhance the expressiveness of paints and to produce various effects. There are a variety of solutions used for various purp

Printmaking rollers are used to apply oil-based ink to printmaking surfaces when using wooden blocks, or when using copperplates or lithographs for chromolithography. There are two types of rollers: leather rollers and synthetic rubber rollers. Le

Linseed oil is used in painting to increase the fixing strength of oil paints, adjust their thickness and viscosity, and to enhance luster. It is also blended into paints as the fixing ingredient (medium) to affix the pigment to the surface of the pa

Painting knives are small, spatula-shaped painting tools used primarily in oil painting. They allow for bold applications of paint that differ from those of a brush, such as paint clumping, paint flattening, paint smoothing, and paint scraping. Pa

Fixatives are liquids produced by dissolving synthetic resins in ethyl alcohol (for example) that produce a thin film on the surface of a finished work produced in charcoal, pencil, conté or the like after being applied in mist form using a mister; t

Palette knives are spatula-shaped tools used primarily in the composition of oil paintings, to mix, remove, and spread paints and mediums on palettes. Palette knives are long, thin spatulas, or “blades,” of roughly 6-15 centimeters in length, whic

Palettes used in oil painting are surfaces upon which the variously colored oil paints are assembled, and upon which those paints can be blended and their consistency can be adjusted. Depending on the properties of the materials being used for the

A tanpo (Chinese: da bao) is a ball of cloth around which another cloth has been wrapped and then tied off at the top with a string, resembling a small pouch. Primarily tanpo are used to apply ink in the process of taking rubbings (takuhon) of cal

Cutters are tools (blades) that are primarily used to hand-cut thin materials such as paper, cloth, and flexible vinyl. They are also used to sharpen instruments such as pencils. Unlike other cutting tools such as knives and blades, cutters have the

Ink spatulas (French: spatule) are a type of spatula used in the printing of woodblocks and other print art when blending colors and adjusting the thickness of the ink, spreading ink on the inking surface, and in cleaning. Spatulas come in a varie

Stretcher frames are the rectangular wooden frames upon which canvases, primarily those used as the surfaces for oil paintings, are stretched. They are also known as canvas frames. The fundamental structure of a stretcher frame is made up of wood

Komasuki is one type of U gouges, rounded blades in the shape of a half-cylinder that are used to carve into the surface of woodcut printing blocks.  “Komasuki” refers specifically to the ones that have a particularly narrow gauge. &