Quantity over Quality 5: Mixed Results

[corvi]

Once a year, on the anniversary of her cancer remission, my mom hikes around some alpine meadows on Mt. Rainier and looks at the wildflowers. I made a papercut of one of the rocks and wildflowers as a gift for her.

I was inspired by Lynd Ward woodcuts, like this one:


 
where the image is formed more by texture than by shape. There's the cross-hatched sail, the squiggly wave, the solid boat, the heavy striped sky, the jittery person, etc.

I thought I could do something similar, with three textures from the mountain:

1. lacey leaves and flowers,
2. big blocky chunks of rock, and
3. spiny trees.

But... uh ... I'm definitely not Lynd Ward yet. :) I would call this mixed results: I think there's promise in the texture-based approach, but I wouldn't quite call this go at it a success.

 

And the photo I was working from:

I changed the asters to lupines, because lupines rule and asters drool, clearly.

Comments

[spiralsheep]

I think your papercut looks good and you've definitely achieved three differing textures.

[corvi]

Thank you! That is very useful feedback.

Have you read any of Lynd Ward's books? Since they're kinda historically important graphic novels, they seem like something you mighta read. :)

[spiralsheep]

I'd never heard of Lynd Ward until you mentioned him. Woodcut history in Britain tends to have a family tree descending from William Morris and artists who don't fit into that tradition don't get much attention. Our traditions of novel-length graphic storytelling come from long-running strip cartoons in newspapers and picture stories in children's "story papers", i.e. comics.

Shaun Tan's graphic novel The Arrival is probably more widely known over here than its continental European precursors.

[spiralsheep]

The nearest library with two (?three?) Lynd Ward graphic novels is a uni library but they're not borrowable and would have to be read on site. /curiosity

[corvi]

I haven't read them either, but I've decided I want to now.

[spiralsheep]

You might be interested in this:

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/712965.Graphic_Witness

[solarbird]

I think it's pretty cool. Were it me I'd try it against different art papers, stuff with lots of interesting crinkly complex surfaces. Not comically so, of course, but you know. Maybe hard printing against a hand-made thick paper, with some particularly tight ink. Things like that.

[solarbird]

And now I realise I misunderstood - I somehow got it in my head you were doing woodcuts, as in block printing, so my idea makes no sense now. That top image is made by cutting paper? Goddamn, I thought it was a linocut print.

[corvi]

I'm doing papercuts, but the thing I was admiring is a woodcut. Sorry for the confusing post.

[tylik]

*Looks up Lynn Ward*

*Realizes there are a bunch of graphic novel references I've been missing... ooohhh*

So, I really like your papercut. Looking at the two, I'm struck by how you're working with a much more uniform linewidth - and I suspect you're going to be a lot more limited on the smaller side by your medium. Ward's work varies not just in shape, but also a lot in size to create those textures... maybe have some things go a lot bigger, for contrast?

[corvi]

That is amazingly useful feedback, thanks. I actually tried to vary the line width, but I guess what seems like wildly-varying line widths when you're leaning a couple inches over the paper with an exacto knife is very different than what will actually have visual impact when looking from a distance at the piece as a whole.

I too have decided that after years of admiring individual examples of Lynd Ward's work, I really ought to get one of the graphic novels. :)

[lotsofplants]

Nice!

[corvi]

Thanks! It's great you're on dreamwidth.