Create a new original vertical Japanese shin-hanga-inspired color print, 2:3, for "La douceur des jours". The attached Hasui print is the style reference: study its large cut color shapes and modest human presence, NOT its signature, lettering, trees or composition. Do not reproduce it.
Design from scratch for a real 24 x 36 cm woodblock print with a deliberately restricted budget: a brown-black key block plus ONLY FIVE flat color ink families (indigo, asagi blue-green, subdued yellow ochre, warm gray and pale dusty pink). Paper cream is the seventh visible tone. Reuse these same inks across figures and setting. The drawing must be sparse, economical and cuttable. Just 5–8 main folds per robe, 3–4 lines for eyes nose mouth, faces as flat warm paper, no cheek modeling. No fine hairs, hatching, tiny foliage, elaborate embroidery, or detailed texture. Only a very slight natural paper tooth, never a speckled aging overlay. One subtle broad bokashi in sky or water, nowhere else. Crisp moderately thin contours only where needed; not a comic outline around every area.
Compose the person at 35–45% of picture height. Keep roughly HALF of the image as uninterrupted quiet air, water, wall or floor, with almost no internal strokes. Landscape is two or three simple interlocking colored planes. The beauty comes from rhythm, intervals and tenderness, not detail.
Human feeling is essential: adult kindness, gentleness, candid ease, relaxed brows, a quiet personal expression; no caricature, no forced grin or adorable child face. Preserve period and essential action described below but invent a fresh balanced spacious composition. No cinematic light, no airbrushed gradients, no pulp illustration, no glamour, no photorealism. No text, seals or signatures. Full opaque image.
SCENE: Kōkō Tennō, elderly stocky Japanese man in private, no imperial regalia. Tired heavy eyelids, full rounded face, sparse hair and light moustache, warm kindly expression without cheerfulness imposed. Seated with rounded shoulders on a cushion, both hands wrapped coherently around one simple warm bowl. One bare foot visible with anatomically plausible five toes; other leg covered. A small lacquer tray carries just one lidded cup. Dignified but ordinary rest. Muted ochre-brown robe with just two or three small motifs, plain gray interior, open veranda overlooking sparse snow shapes and muted indigo shrubs. Gentle diffuse winter light, no glowing fireplace effect, no chiaroscuro drama. Few structural lines, broad quiet planes.