Mountains
Mountains
Blue pen, brush and linocut mountains for Seeds of Renaissance, a candidate look for a sub-brand. Each image from moodboard/mountains/mountains-moodboard is turned into a transparent element: the paper is removed and the ink kept. See also animals and woodcuts.
Gallery with every version and a link to each file: https://claude.ai/artifact/8bus8CMBYwRgsbSvxxJPSJ (source: gallery.html, built by python3 build-gallery.py from elements.json and gallery-shell.html, which also makes the gitignored thumbs/; publish it with elements/ and thumbs/). On the design system site: system/mountains/gallery.html.
Colours
Every mountain comes in the blue it was drawn in, cobalt (--print-blue) and black (--ink). The drawn blues were chosen by Sylvie to keep each drawing's character, and are used only for the mountains. They sit outside the system's illustration inks, which is an open tension (Beads design-34t.43). The linocut also has three lighter blues for pale grounds and backgrounds. Don't retint them in other colours.
| Colour | Hex | Used on |
|---|---|---|
| Pen blue | #10248a | High peak, peaks and waves |
| Violet blue | #1d14b8 | Small peak |
| Deep blue | #0b2c8f | Grid peak |
| Navy | #14245f | Contour range |
| Faded blue | #2e3977 | 1934 ridge |
| Ultramarine | #0f22b5 | Brush ridge |
| Mid blue, light blue, pale blue | #2f5bc4, #6f93dc, #a9c0ea | Peaks and waves only |
Cobalt (--print-blue) | #03296f | All |
Black (--ink) | #1b1916 | All |
Elements
In elements/, named subject-style-colour, each a transparent 1000px-wide PNG. The linocut also has a traced .svg. Pen and brush drawings are PNG only: their transparency follows the density of the ink, so light hatching and wash stay light, which tracing would flatten into solid shapes.
| Element | What it is | Inks | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
high-peak-pen | Steep single peak with clouds and pines, dense ballpoint hatching | blue, cobalt, black | mood board 01 |
small-peak-pen | Compact peak in quick ballpoint strokes | violet, cobalt, black | mood board 04 |
peak-grid | Tall peak above mist; grid paper removed, base faded out | blue, cobalt, black | mood board 03 |
range-contours-pen | Whole range with contour lines in the sky | navy, cobalt, black | mood board 05 |
ridge-1934-pen | Ridge in parallel hatching, 1934; handwritten note removed | blue, cobalt, black | mood board 06 |
ridge-brush | Loose ridge in brush strokes and wash, cropped to the drawing | ultramarine, cobalt, black | mood board 02 |
peaks-waves-linocut | Linocut peaks over curling waves, ink only (SVG + PNG) | blue, cobalt, black, mid-blue, light-blue, pale-blue | mood board 07 |
peaks-waves-linocut-map | Same linocut keeping the old map, sky removed | blue, black (original print) | mood board 07 |
Using them
Same rules as the woodcut graphics: one per section at most, punctuation, not wallpaper; no outlines or shadows. The busy ones (contour range, grid peak) work best large or as a quiet background.
How they are made
magick SOURCE -channel R -separate +channel -negate -level LOW%,HIGH% mask.png
magick mask.png -fill "#10248a" -colorize 100 mask.png -alpha off -compose CopyOpacity -composite PNG32:OUT.png
pngquant --quality 80-100 --speed 1 --strip --force --skip-if-larger --output OUT.png OUT.png
The red channel measures how much blue ink is on the paper, so it becomes the alpha; the colour is then flat. On tinted or unevenly lit paper, flatten the paper first (archive/mountains-2026-10/flatten-mask.sh). The linocut SVG is traced from the same mask with potrace as in ../animals/make-element.sh. Per-image notes (grid removal, the fade, the caption crop) are in archive/mountains-2026-10/README.md.
To add a mountain: put the source on the mood board, cut it as above in the drawn blue, cobalt and black, add a row to elements.json and this README, then run python3 build-gallery.py.
Status
Sources are from the web, with no rights cleared. Fine for exploring the sub-brand; re-source or redraw before public use. Two blue woodcut prints and the source links are still to add (Beads design-34t.44).
