Here's a peek at one of the illustrations for a publisher of Kipling books:
I thought it turned out kind of cool. It's tough for me to make something "look like a woodcut" without actually cutting it but the scope of the commission just didn't allow for that kind of time investment. So I started the way I usually start, with a real subject, in this case a pine cone.
After a photo session with my pine cone, I imported into Photoshop and applied some filters until I was satisfied with a very lightly rendered image. Then I just traced it with a brush as if I was cutting it with my chisels. A bit time consuming, but the result is very woodcut like, perhaps more like a wood engraving and it has my "hand" style deeply embedded in it. Or so I think, anyway, it actually looks like I drew it and carved it.
Spring is here and I'm getting a bad case of spring fever. But more work is to be done.
