Dueling Western Women Checkerboard Collages

 June 24, 2021

    Here's a creative dilemma you might be able to help me with. How do we successfully illustrate a book cover featuring hundreds of notable frontier women? It's hard to have just one image capture it all when there are so many ethnic and regional types we are covering in our forthcoming book on the wonderful women of the Wild West. And by we, I mean myself and Jana Bommersbach. So, this dilemma led me to think that perhaps a checkerboard collage of women portraits might work?

Checkerboard Collage #4

   Perhaps, with one dominate image in the front:

Calamity Jane, colorized by Chris Eveland

Or, perhaps an even more severe checkerboard in the back?

Checkerboard Black & White

magazine covers

   Or, somewhat more random?

Random collage of images

   I collect collages like this, above, for inspiration in my quest for narrative clarity. This is one of my favorites and I can't even remember where I got it from. Expect to see something similar filled with BBB Wild Women in the next few days.   

   Or, we could even go to old school mash ups, like this:

Wild Women Checkerboard Collage #5

   Of course, my first choice would be to have one striking image of a bold woman and my concern is that I will over complicate this. You know what the Old Vaqueros say.

"The simplest thing in the world is to make things complicated."

—Old Vaquero Saying

Conversely:

"The most complicated thing in the world is to be able to keep things simple."

—Even Older Vaquero Saying