Patterns of Ancient Life, Dark Edition by Pública Rework: The Skull in Negative

Patterns of Ancient Life, Dark Edition is an art print of a Tyrannosaurus rex skull drawn entirely in William Morris's Larkspur pattern, printed pale on a ground that is almost black. Nothing in it was redrawn for the dark. Every tone of the Light Edition has simply been reversed, and a skull turns out to be a subject that looks more like itself that way round.

Patterns of Ancient Life, Dark Edition by Pública Rework is a fine art print pairing William Morris's Larkspur pattern of 1874 with Alan Pedersen's T-rex drawing from 2012. The skull is rendered as dense leaf and flower pattern on a near-black ground. It is printed on Fine Art Freja paper at 265 g, in two sizes and two colourways.

The Light Edition, printed in negative

The Black/White colourway is the Light Edition's White/Blue with light and dark exchanged, leaf for leaf.

Lay the two side by side and every shape is where you left it. What has changed is which part carries the ink. In the Light Edition the Larkspur leaves are printed in navy and the paper shows between them. Here the leaves are the pale part and everything between them is black: the veins, the gaps, the small spaces between one blossom and the next. Compared point by point across the skull, the two files run almost exactly opposite.

The balance of the whole sheet turns over with it. Roughly four fifths of the Light Edition is bare paper. Roughly four fifths of this one is ink. The skull, the patterned border and the small caption at the foot are all that is left of the light.

Pale bone against the dark

With the ground taken all the way to black, the print shows the skull the way an X-ray shows bone: pale, with darkness all round it.

Bone is dense and stops more of the rays than anything around it, so on the film it comes out light while everything else falls away to dark. An X-ray is itself a negative. The Dark Edition reaches the same arrangement by the same route, by turning a positive picture over.

It changes what the holes do, too. The eye socket, the large window in front of it and the small oval of the nostril are the places where a real head carried no bone. On a radiograph those are the dark places, because there is nothing there to stop the rays. Here they are dark as well, so they read as openings in something solid rather than as gaps in a pattern.

The series runs three ways from one drawing. Patterns of Ancient Life, Light Edition leaves the skull on white paper, and the Colour Edition sets it on a full field of flat colour. The Dark Edition is the only one of the three whose ground is black.

Black/White or night green with gold

Both colourways set a pale pattern on a dark ground, and they differ in how far they push the contrast.

Black/White is the strict version. The ground is a neutral near-black and the foliage a clean pale grey, so the contrast is as high as the print can make it and every leaf stays distinct from across a room. This is the one that mirrors the Light Edition's White/Blue, tone for tone.

The second colourway is gentler. Its ground is not quite black but a very dark green, close enough that you notice it only beside the Black/White, and the foliage is printed in an ochre gold. The skull is warmer and lower in contrast, and it sits back into the sheet rather than standing off it.

Both colourways are offered in 30x40 cm and 50x70 cm, on Fine Art Freja paper at 265 g.

Patterns of Ancient Life is one drawing issued three ways, and the Dark Edition is the most literal of them. Nothing has been recoloured and nothing moved. The whole sheet has simply been turned over from light to dark.

What comes back is a skull made of pale leaves, with darkness wherever the bone would not be. Of the three editions it is the quietest to live with, and the one closest to how bone looks on an X-ray.

About Patterns of Ancient Life, Dark Edition

What paper is Patterns of Ancient Life, Dark Edition printed on?
It is printed on Fine Art Freja paper at 265 g, chosen for quality and colour reproduction. The frame shown in the product images is for illustration and is not included.

What sizes does Patterns of Ancient Life, Dark Edition come in?
Two sizes, 30x40 cm and 50x70 cm. Both colourways are offered in both sizes, and the composition is identical in each, with the skull in the upper half of the sheet and the specimen caption at the foot.

What is the difference between the two colourways of the Dark Edition?
They carry the same drawing on different dark grounds. Black/White is pale grey foliage on a neutral near-black, the Light Edition's White/Blue reversed tone for tone. The second colourway is ochre gold foliage on a very dark green, warmer and lower in contrast.

Is Patterns of Ancient Life, Dark Edition a limited edition, and does it come with a certificate?
No to both. It is an open edition art print and is not one of the eight limited editions NOKUKO holds in a separate collection, and no certificate of authenticity is issued, because certificates accompany original paintings rather than prints. It is made for NOKUKO by Pública Rework and comes with free worldwide shipping on orders over €120.