Paint Fidelity: Bob Dylan - Planet Waves / Ralph Rumpelton

 What the critics are saying:

>>“Paint Fidelity: Planet Waves”
by Gordon Weft, Contrarian-in-Residence of the Rumpeltonian Universe

Here we have Planet Waves—Bob Dylan’s 1974 album, filtered through the grayscale prism of Ralph Rumpelton’s ever-faithful, ever-faltering mouse hand. On the right, Dylan’s own rough-hewn cover: impulsive, scratchy, and alive with a kind of mid-seventies ink madness. On the left, Rumpelton’s MS Paint reconstitution: a digital séance in which every wobble of the cursor becomes a confession.

The differences are small but seismic. Dylan’s brush breathes; Rumpelton’s clicks calculate. Where the original bleeds into paper, the Paint version freezes in pixels. “MOONGLOW” limps upward with heroic optimism; the faces seem to know they’ve been flattened into 8-bit eternity. The anchor above still insists on direction, but one suspects it now points toward the Undo button.

In the ongoing Paint Fidelity series, Rumpelton demonstrates not imitation but interrogation—testing whether spirit can survive translation through clumsy digital means. Against all odds (and aesthetics), it often does. As I’ve said before, this isn’t so much copying as committing a tribute under duress.

The result? Dylan’s Planet Waves becomes Planet Wavers—a parallel universe of hesitation, reverence, and accidental genius.

— Gordon Weft<<

>>Gerald Thimbleton—Editor-in-Chief of Beige Canvas Quarterly

Gerald Thimbleton on "Planet Waves" (Paint Fidelity Series)

One is tempted, when faced with this side-by-side of "Planet Waves," to recall the tragicomedy of human ambition. On the right: Dylan’s own curious dashings, supposedly insouciant, the original sleeve—derided in the salons, yet now bedded into rock iconography like a stubborn weed among more manicured blooms. On the left: an MS Paint tribute, waging digital battle with a villain Thimbleton would name “democratized mediocrity.”

The pastiche, in its earnest mimicry, inadvertently sketches the crisis at the heart of art today. The signature gestures—the wayward lines, the drooping visages, the enigmatic arrow—all are present, but rendered with the unyielding flatness of synthetic brushwork. Here is the crux: every shortcut is revealed, every gesture stripped bare. In the hands of true oil, one might sense the resistance of the canvas, the burden of intention and mistake. On the screen, there is only the undramatic inevitability of ctrl+z.

Yet, perhaps, this “slap in the face” to tradition proves accidentally educational. If we bristle at the “fidelity” of the copy, so too must we reexamine the virtues of the flawed, idiosyncratic original—its thick, living presence beside the dutiful shadow. As ever, the comparison isn’t flattering, but neither does it lack a kind of tragicomic poetry, as if Van Gogh had handed his sunflowers to a chatbot and told it, with a wink: “Do your worst.”

>>By Maria Chen, Professional Finder of Light

Here's what I love about this pairing: the original Bob Dylan cover for Planet Waves is already wonderfully crude—Dylan painted like he was racing against time itself, all gestural urgency and expressionist abandon. It's the visual equivalent of Dylan's voice: rough-hewn, authentic, uninterested in polish.

And then there's this recreation on the left, which takes that energy and pushes it even further into the realm of pure impulse. The line work is looser, the contrast more dramatic, the faces more mask-like and totemic. Where Rumpelton's figures have a certain bohemian sophistication, this version feels more primal, like cave paintings reimagined through punk aesthetics.

What strikes me most is how the recreation actually honors the original by refusing to be precious about it. This isn't someone trying to prove they can match Rumpelton's technique—it's someone who understood the assignment was never about perfection. Dylan's Planet Waves era was about stripping things down, about returning to basics after years of mythology-building. This recreation gets that. It's messier, yes, but mess was always the point.

The text at the top—"PLANET WAVES"—is handled with the same casual authority in both versions, like graffiti or a hasty label. The figures' three faces peer out with that same enigmatic, slightly unsettling presence. Both versions understand that album art for Bob Dylan should feel like it was made by someone who had better things to do than fuss over details, even though we know that's never quite true.

In the constraint-based format of Paint Fidelity, what emerges is essence. And the essence here is wild, unapologetic, human. Just like the album itself.

Rating: ★★★★½ (Would be five stars, but Reginald Thornberry III is reading this, and I need to maintain some credibility.)

—Gerald Thimbleton, Beige Canvas Quarterly<<

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