Lankes worked primarily in the woodcut medium and had studios, at various times, in both Gardenville, New York and Hilton Village in Newport News, Virginia.

His works, numbering about thirteen hundred, helped elevate woodblock prints beyond illustrations in commercial productions to recognition as a fine art.

Having a wife and family to support, he obtained work as foreman of the drafting room at Newton Arms, a rifle factory in Buffalo.

In 1917, using a V-cutting tool intended for cross-hatching grips on gunstocks, and a piece of wood from an apple tree blown down by a storm, he cut his first woodblock titled "Flying Gosling."

Like many leftists in the early 20th century, his views grew more moderate later on but he continued to have a great disdain for the bourgeoisie and a deep respect for the working class, which is always evident in his art.

Lankes would have a love-hate relationship with the American South for the rest of his life but the move proved to be very fruitful for inspiration and new friends and colleagues.

In 1940, Harper & Brothers published an edition of Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, with thirty woodcut illustrations by Lankes and an introduction by Pulitzer prize-winning poet Robert P. T. Coffin.