A linocut at last

I've finally got a concept I'm fairly happy with for my broadside. I found a great design, basically a silhouette of two men, one pointing up at the sky (implicitly, an airplane overhead) and one looking up at it with binoculars. Even though they are shown in silhouette, the figures are clear enough, their poses are striking, and the vertical focus of it is just wonderful. It sort of squares with the "dream in color, dream in volume" thing... sort of... I'm calling it close enough.

The obvious aviation angle makes me want to dig through Wind, Sand, and Stars again, but when I picked it up a week or two ago I was really surprised how bombastic it seemed. Perhaps bombastic is not quite the word, but unsubtle? Direct? Certainly not the captivating and romantic impression I remember from the first umpteen times I read and reread it. Maybe I need to just sit down and read it properly, not skim it in a tearing hurry. But that worries me, all the same. Maybe it's the first stage of Postmodern Disease.

That aside, I think I have a good enough concept to move forward and start pulling proofs of various bits of text in different fonts and experimenting with layout, font combinations, and all that. The "words like gods" broadside hanging up in the print shop is still inspiring; I especially like how the lines in large type form are reasonably coherent all by themselves, even though they are just isolated bits of what Shakespeare wrote. I wonder if there isn't some potential with that, perhaps "all of us... dream in color... dream in volume... fabricate" or something. The shop is open in the evening tomorrow, and I intend to get down there as early as I can and start experimenting.