Style combination · Contrasts

Expressionist Woodcut Graphics × Rorke's Drift Linocut

Both gouge black relief prints, but the Brücke woodcut distorts one anguished figure on tilted axes, while Rorke's Drift spreads a whole story across calm, packed bands; pick by whether the image should confess or narrate.

From the research on Rorke's Drift Linocut

Mix them and make something Expressionist Woodcut Graphics Rorke's Drift Linocut

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Expressionist Woodcut Graphics, their arrangement from Rorke's Drift Linocut, the finish from Expressionist Woodcut Graphics. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

What each style brings

Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.

Expressionist Woodcut Graphics Rorke's Drift Linocut

Type from Expressionist Woodcut Graphics: Hand-lettering
Experimental & distorted
Colour from Rorke's Drift Linocut: Monochrome
Light ground
Form from Expressionist Woodcut Graphics: Distortion & exaggeration
Angular & zigzag
Composition from Rorke's Drift Linocut: Horror vacui
Sequential narrative
Surface from Expressionist Woodcut Graphics: Carved line
Paper & letterpress bite

The type

Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.

Display · Expressionist Woodcut Graphics

Halo

Archivo Black, standing in for Heavy grotesque and Fraktur journal mastheads

Text · Rorke's Drift Linocut

The prints of the Lutheran art centre that Swedish teachers Peder and Ulla Gowenius started at Ceza Hospital in 1962 and moved to Rorke's Drift in 1963: under apartheid, which denied Black South Africans formal fine-art education, the chief training ground for many Black artists. Azaria Mbatha, John Muafangejo, Charles Nkosi and others cut black-and-white linocuts of Bible stories, Zulu and Kwanyama history and daily life, often crowded into horizontal bands with every gap filled by figures, foliage and pattern. Muafangejo added titles, dedications and commentary in the print itself.

Archivo; Rorke's Drift Linocut used Hand-cut title in the block and Hand-cut captions and slogans

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Rorke's Drift Linocut, with a counter-accent from Expressionist Woodcut Graphics. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Expressionist Woodcut Graphics Rorke's Drift Linocut

#f6f1e3 ground · 36%
#151210 ink · 14%
#d9cfb8 accent · 18%
#d9932f accent · 14%
#c8432b accent · 10%
#2c4a8c accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f6f1e3;
  --ink: #151210;
  --accent-1: #d9cfb8;
  --accent-2: #d9932f;
  --accent-3: #c8432b;
  --accent-4: #2c4a8c;
  --font-display: "Archivo Black", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Archivo", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

Rorke's Drift Linocut: These prints are the work of named Black South African and Namibian artists, many still in copyright with the artists or their estates, made under apartheid at a Lutheran mission centre. Rankin and Hobbs call the 'typical' Rorke's Drift print a construct that the market pushed artists to comply with; the centre also made etchings, aquatints, colour relief prints and screenprints, so treat this banded black-and-white linocut as one face of a diverse school, not the whole of it. Borrow the system (hand-cut black-and-white relief, banded narrative, words in the block), not a particular print, a named artist's figures or Muafangejo's lettering hand. Do not label generated work 'naive' or 'tribal' African art: when Clement Greenberg judged Art South Africa Today in 1975, Rorke's Drift artists were displayed in a 'catch all' section for representational and 'naive' works. Do not invent Zulu or Kwanyama ritual, Christian scenes or struggle martyrs as decoration: picture the subject the brief supplies in its own community's terms. Never add an artist's signature, edition number or a Rorke's Drift or ELC inscription to generated work, and never present a generated image as a Rorke's Drift print.