Sami did another neat drawing this summer of a veiled chameleon after seeing one in an aquarium at camp. I had my eye on it for a while and when my wife suggested that I try and preserve some of our kids youth by making woodcuts of their drawings instead of.....well, you know....how I usually waste my time-- I agreed.
So seeing this as an opportunity and with Sami's permission, I jumped into this little project. When I told an artist friend that I was ripping off my 8-year-old's drawings for content he said that all artists look at and reinterpret the work of others.
I'm not sure if a visit to Kinko's to photocopy and reverse the image can honestly be called a "reinterpretation" but I'll let history decide.
I still plan to tweak this a bit. You can't tell but the chameleon body and the background color are actually different greens and values but once I printed the dark blue-green key block (the outline colors) I lost all that. So I hope to darken the background with a cool glaze and/or change the text color to a nice violet......And I'm thinking of embossing a nice bumpy lizard skin texture on the chameleon body if the paper will tolerate it.
I'm just sorry that I didn't add a sticky pink tongue and fly in the lower right.
I love it!
ReplyDeleteWhat a great idea! I think I should revisit my grandchildren's drawings!
ReplyDeleteThe two greens are quite obvious on my monitor, but I love to print my blocks every way from Sunday before I finally light on the end result, so go for the change. Don't forget to let us see it.
Very sweet! I wish I'd been doing woodblocks when my son was so imaginative! Maybe I can scare up an old yellowed drawing. ;-]
ReplyDeleteIt's a terrific idea!