A Woodcut + Digital Art Mix

[Jubal]

So, I was making an image for my cleric D&D character Pyngale, a Very Norfolk cleric who is a priest of Hickathrift, a deity based on the Norfolk folk character Tom Hickathrift, who has giant strength and hits ogres over the head with a cart axle.

I struck upon a woodcut of Hickathrift in early modern dress, and struck upon the idea of trying to emulate the patterning and convert him into the more medieval dress style I wanted for Pyngale. The result actually doesn't look too bad, which is pleasing:



The original had a black, brimmed hat, lines rather than chainmail-effect decoration , no beard, and shoes instead of boots. It was the chainmail that took most of the time, both doing the links by hand and time spent working out how medieval woodcut artists might actually have done chainmail effects, which they didn't very often. I think the conversion came out quite reasonably

[Glaurung]

Well done - I like it.

[Tusky]

Really cool!

I assume you didn't make the whole woodcut since you said you'd "struck upon" it, but I'd be interested in how you did the amendments. Are you secretly a master wood worker?

[Jubal]

Here's a copy of a similar figure that I started with, bottom right figure here, dug out again for comparison:



So I worked in GIMP: as you can see I retained the basic shape, belt/lower tunic, eyes, and weaponry. For the beard I clone-stamped lines from the shirt, though I used an eraser brush to carefully taper the line ends a bit which made them look a bit mroe natural to the style. The boot extensions were just black so that was easy (though I clone stamped there too because the black on print is never 100% without white spots). The chainmail was next: for that I spent a while looking at ways that woodcut artists had done chainmail, picked what looked like the simplest option, then digitally erased the lining on the shirt and got to work. I used a bar-shaped paintbrush and just made a lot of individual comma/half-loop shapes by manual mouse drawing, alternating rows in each direction and lining them up as per where the fall of the mail ought to be. That was by far the largest part of the job.

The last part was the helmet, which was simple enough, I first took the top and brim of the hat down a bit, then removed the brim annd hollowed out the remainder. I used the same bar-shaped brush (bar shaped not circular to look more like cuts and pen strokes) to draw a line a bit above the rim, then erased angled bar lines through that to make the helmet studs.