Lynn Ward's Woodcut Styling

[Synthetik]

The New York Times book review published an article this last sunday that features some photos of old graphic novels done by Lynn Ward, that are all based on woodcut prints.  The visual style of his work is really great, so i thought i'd point it out in case anyone is looking for this kind of visual inspiration. It would be interesting to try and put together paint action sequences to create these kinds of woodcut effects. If anyone is interested i can point out some different approaches you could take.

[Paul Perlow]

John,

I am always interested in woodcut approaches, Thanks for your offer.

As it happens, I originally saw and bought Lynd Ward's graphic novel, "God's Man," about 40 years a ago. Lynd Ward was a great artist. I was awed and overwhelmed by its impact. I doubt whether a modern printing could emulate the darkness or power of the blacks on the printed page at the time of the original printing. By the way, I still have the book.

I love woodcuts. Years ago I bought a number of originals by Fritz Eichenberg, Claire Leighton and others when the prices were very affordable. For some reason woodcuts have never been considered seriously in the upper echelon of the art world. The same is true for watercolors in comparison to oil paintings. I believe they are both dramatic and great, though.

[mark g]

I am very interested...

[Synthetik]

Here's something quick i threw together as an experiment this morning as a paint action sequence.

I'm using the anti-alias solid brush type to draw white vectors on a black background. Lynn Ward does a really great job of making the object outlining really jump out in the woodcut, and this isn't doing that nearly as well, but is making an attempt to try and do something like that. I'm using a combo of the vectorizer and edge paths to first define and paint in the object outlines. Then i use the Threshold ip op to build selection masks to constrain the additional white vector painting for the highlight fills.