Motherlode !!!

I never really understood that word. I know what it means, I just never looked up it's etymology. This is the best example of what I came up with when searching for information on this word; basically, from 1800's and 1900's a woman's worth as a wife was measured by her proficiency at or abundance of weaving or sewing. Yeah, sexist right? Well, I suppose it's good that we moved them into the kitchen over time. Rugs and sweaters don't taste very good and are rather chewy.

Here's an old picture that I scanned recently for archival purposes. I did some minor cleanup on it. You can see (or maybe you can't since the image is so small) the top is a little blurry from the scan for some reason. Oh well.



And this is the meaning for that title and sideways discussion on it's origin. I found when looking over the image full size on the monitor how totally cool some of the ink word is, and figured I'd post a whole shitload of full sized examples...

This picture was done with a quill and ink. Pretty sweet eh? So the results is some very excellent ink lines and interaction with wet ink on ink. Kinky.

The following images are how the scans appear when viewing them at 100% in photoshop.



That one, leaves from a rose vine, shows what I was speaking of in a previous post about different artists' impact on me in terms of their line technique. I haven't read the book in a while, but that image reminds me of Frank Miller's Ronin. I'm not sure what tools he used, but the inky-ness of that book is extremely cool.



Not quite as 'clever' looking as the image before it, this one shows how I work. Usually quite fast and sort of 'scratchy'. Personally I don't care for the quality of this area, but it's still fun to look at.



Looks like some kind of mutated giant tropical tree. I imagine Flash Gordon would find this kind of leafy creature in one of his adventures.





And these two are from the thorny bits. Again, up close they remind me of some threatening alien world a space adventurer from the 1950's might encounter...