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