Ward (1905-1985) became known in the 1930s for his "wordless novels" comprised entirely of woodcuts. (His first, Gods' Man, a powerful story about the corrupting influence of money, debuted the week of the great stockmarket crash in 1929).
I discovered a battered collection of Ward's books on my father's bookshelf. This illustration-- one of my favorites-- was from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
At age five, I was already expert at drawing scary monsters. I'd figured out that the two most important ingredients for a monster were 1.) a scary face, and 2.) great big muscles. Yet, Ward's monster had neither. Ward succeeded in unnerving me without showing a face at all.
That gave me plenty of food for thought.
Today you see artists straining to draw scarier faces and bigger muscles. They'd do well to linger for a moment over the work of Lynd Ward.
Posts
