Animals
Animals
Woodcut and linocut animals for Seeds of Renaissance. Each image from the moodboard folder animals/animals-moodboard (on GitHub) is turned into a transparent element: the paper is removed and the ink kept, then printed in four inks. See also woodcuts and mountains.
Gallery with every file and a link to each: graphics/animals on the design system site, built with every set by python3 system/build/build-galleries.py from elements.json (which also makes the gitignored thumbs/).
Elements
In elements/. Every name has an .svg (vector, traced) and a 1000px-wide transparent .png. Names read subject-style-colour. Parts left uncut in the print (the fox's chest, the swan's feather lines) are transparent, so the ground shows through, as in a print.
| Colour | Hex |
|---|---|
Black (--ink) | #1b1916 |
Blue (--print-blue) | #03296f |
Deep green (--print-green) | #1f3d2b |
Mustard yellow (--print-mustard) | #c9a227 |
| Element | What it is | Source |
|---|---|---|
fox-sitting-linocut-{black,blue,green,mustard} | Fox sitting, looking up | mood board 01 |
foxes-walking-engraving-{black,blue,green,mustard} | Two foxes trotting, fine broken line. Draft: small watermarked source | mood board 02 |
swan-wings-open-linocut-{black,blue,green,mustard} | Swan with wings spread | mood board 03 |
bird-flowering-stem-linocut-{black,blue,green,mustard} | Bird diving with a flowering stem in its beak | mood board 04 |
snail-engraving-{black,blue,green,mustard} | Snail reaching out, fine engraved shell. The source is small, so the finest lines thicken a little | mood board 05 |
barn-owl-framed-woodcut-{black,blue,green,mustard} | Barn owl standing, with its double frame and "H·R" monogram | mood board 06 |
barn-owl-woodcut-{black,blue,green,mustard} | Same owl on its own, frame and monogram removed | mood board 06 |
barn-owl-flying-stamp-{black,blue,green,mustard} | Barn owl in flight seen from above, fine line | mood board 07 |
bear-standing-woodcut-{black,blue,green,mustard} | Bear standing on its hind legs, looking up | mood board 08 |
wild-boar-linocut-{black,blue,green,mustard} | Wild boar trotting, bristly coat in rows of short cuts | mood board 09 |
swallow-flight-linocut-{black,blue,green,mustard} | Swallow swooping, bird only | mood board 10 |
swallow-flight-gouges-linocut-{black,blue,green,mustard} | Same, keeping the gouge marks around it | mood board 10 |
hedgehog-curled-linocut-{black,blue,green,mustard} | Hedgehog curled up asleep, fine sweeping spines | mood board 11 |
snake-coiled-watercolour-{black,blue,green,mustard} | Coiled snake, two-tone: solid scales over a 22% tint of the same ink | mood board 12 |
snake-coiled-watercolour-colour (PNG only) | Same snake in its original watercolour colours, plate number removed | mood board 12 |
butterfly-{dark-spotted,swallowtail-striped,pale-tailed,dark-edged,banded,spotted}-photo-{black,blue,green,mustard} | Six butterflies, each a separate element, printed in three tones of the ink (solid, half and a light tint) | mood board 13 |
butterfly-…-photo-original (PNG only) | Each butterfly in its original greys | mood board 13 |
loon-swimming-linocut-{black,blue,green,mustard} | Loon swimming, with ripples | mood board 14 |
How they are made
./make-element.sh SOURCE NAME [threshold%] [crop WxH+X+Y]
The paper is flattened (divided by a blurred local maximum) so uneven light does not turn grey (skip this with NOFLAT=1 for clean white sources with large solid areas, like 04), then thresholded and traced with potrace (brew install potrace). Solid linocuts suit a threshold around 70–75; thin engraved lines around 65–70.
For a painted or photographic source (not a clean print), use make-tonal.sh SOURCE NAME [crop] [edge%] [erase boxes] instead. It keeps the original colours as NAME-original.png and prints each ink in three tones. It needs a dark edge round the animal; where a pale edge meets the paper the outline can come out a little ragged (the bottom of the spotted butterfly's hindwings).
To add an animal: put the source in the moodboard folder animals/animals-moodboard (on GitHub), run make-element.sh, check the result on a light ground, add an element to elements.json (schema: system/graphics/README) and a row to this README, optimise the PNGs, then run python3 system/build/build-galleries.py.
PNGs are optimised with pngquant --quality 80-100 --strip. They can be regenerated from the SVGs at any time (magick -background none -density 72 X.svg -trim +repage -resize 1000x PNG32:X.png). The exception is snake-coiled-watercolour-colour.png, which has no SVG and is kept lossless.
