Tryptich Time!

My wife is nuts for IKEA. Just loves the place. For me, IKEA is akin to some Alighieri-esque torture cavern, in which my claustrophobia is subjected to the ultimate in designer terror. But loving my wife, as I do, I accompany her into that awful place.
A couple of years ago, we walked out of the Swedish hell with a tryptich picture frame. We didn't really know what we wanted to do with it, but we were certain that upon arrival at home, we would be struck with inspiration and would have a nice little sparse-art piece to decorate the walls of our then-apartment. Two years and 3000 miles later, we'd moved to Illinois, and the picture frame was still in its original packaging. I decided to do something about it:
Ignore the text in the middle, it's not important, and it didn't stay.


IKEA and I are no closer to being friends today than we ever were, but at least I found something to do with that damn frame. It's a start. An intrepid step toward peace.

Veritas ab Candidas project

My "Veritas ab Candidas" project was my first major foray into extensive illumination work.
I'm really not sure how the old monks in Ireland and Scotland went about the process of putting together illuminations. I know they used paint, not ink, and I know they didn't have access to ultra-fine-point pens.
I start with a template, and the slowly fill in one section at a time:

More sections, and more division of smaller subsections within the larger piece:
Doing this kind of work was really a big departure for me from my normal pieces. Celtic art, for me, is largely about precision, symmetry, and order. The illumination pieces sometimes have a sort of symmetry to them, as with "carpet" style pieces (one of which I'm currently tinkering with), but one of my favorite things about them is that it often seems like the art is just spilling out of the mold, and taking on a kind of untamed life of its own. Asymmetry and free-form style is a big part of that.
I've also always been a sucker for old-looking pieces, so it absence of any color, a parchment or animal hide background is preferred to make the design look sort of antiqued:It's possible that I'll add color to this piece in the future. The original black-and-white is around here somewhere, and if I have a spare week with nothing to do, it may just happen.

Recent Commissions

When you're a freelance artist and art isn't your main professional pursuit, work can be kind of sparse. I have gotten a couple of commission recently though, and they've been fun to work on.

In backwards order, because I have more pictures of the second:

This first set of designs was done for a guy named Jared. He's looking to start a craft business making Viking-style drinking horns, and he wanted to be able to brand both a personal design and a business logo on each horn. His family crest animal is a Northern Goshawk, so he wanted something that would reflect that tradition. These were what we came up with:
Somewhat earlier in the year, I was contacted by a young woman on DeviantART who wanted to commission a tattoo design for her friends. They wanted to get matching tattoos of Celtic wings on their backs, and had seen this design elsewhere:
...but they wanted something a little more traditional Celtic-looking. And for my part (no offense meant to the original artist), I would never ever allow a friend to get anything that looked this sloppy tattooed on their skin.
...I guess that did sound a little offensive. Sorry, anonymous other artist.

Anyway, I came up with the design piece-by-piece:

And finished with the whole thing together.

(By the way, if your interested in using this design or anything like it, contact me first, and I'll put you in touch with the person who commissioned it. Same goes for the logos up above.)

Spin Spin Spin

Last Christmas, my in-laws bought me a couple books of Celtic designs and modern knotwork. One of the books was "101 Celtic Spirals," by Courtney Davis. It includes spiral designs from early Celtic stone carvings and metal work (2nd-8th century AD), the (relatively) more modern stuff from the illuminated manuscripts (Book of Kells, Book of Durrow, Lindisfarne Gospels, etc.), as well as contemporary Celtic motifs from sources around the world working today. It was really a great resource for working on a new style of art for me.

I started out with basic spiral designs, and liked them so much, I haven't stopped playing around with them since.
The ones above I liked a lot, but the image was too low-resolution to order a print from my DeviantART gallery, so I decided to make a similar set with my watercolor pencils (also a gift from the in-laws):
The colors are sort of washed out, there, but it actually looks pretty good in real life.

As I got more acquainted with the traditional Celtic styles, my interest turned toward the illuminated manuscripts. If you've never seen pictures of the art in these books, go look up "Book of Kells" on Google Images. The detail work is unbelievable. I honestly don't understand how a person can get the kind of precision with paint-and-brush work that these monks were achieving. I can barely make lines that small using a specialized extra-fine pen! This was one of my illumination-style attempts at spiral work:

My goal, more or less, was to see how closely I could fit lines in next to one another without actually touching. My specialty Uni-Ball Signo bit 0.18 gel pen was very helpful.
Not a great picture, but it can give you some idea what the detail work is like. the circle is about 2.5" across.
And sometimes you've just got to combine traditional techniques and modern technology.

Ring Knot Tutorial

As mentioned in a previous post, there was a period of a couple years when all I did were what I call "ring knots." These are circular knot, usually (though not always) comprised of one continuous line weaving over and around itself in a symmetrical pattern.
After getting quite a bit of practice with these pieces, I got to a point where I had a specific process that I would go through to create each one. Remembering what a pain in the ass it had been to learn how to put them together in the first time without any form of instruction, I thought it would be helpful to others to put together a tutorial detailing my process. As the tutorial itself says, there are any number of ways to go about creating these kinds of knots - mine is a good way, but it's by no means the only way, and I'm sure there are benefits and drawbacks to the others. If you're going to do this kind of methodical, geometric art, it pays to fiddle around to see what works best for you.

(The thumbnail below doesn't expand to a size that is readable. Check out the tutorial at my DeviantART site, here: Ring Knot Tutorial)

Celtic Cross

At the time that I made it (about 2 years ago), this piece was by far the most complicated and labor-intensive thing I'd ever done. Something like 38 different interweaving lines and 35 hours of work.


Still not my absolute favorite, but it really turned out pretty well in the end:


By the way, if anyone is interested, this is another piece where the original black-and-white is just sitting in a stack of papers around here. I'd be happy to part with it - if you're interested, contact me and make me an offer.

Knots are Gifts. That's just how it works,

While I love making the Celtic art nonsense, when it hangs around my house it just collects dust, so I usually end up giving it away as gifts. I recently realized that this was the case, and decided to starting using it to my advantage - now I make pieces specifically to be gifts for particular people.

A gift for my father, who perseveres:

A gift for my mother, lover of all things big and clumsy (most particularly pelicans and moose):


A gift for my mother-in-law, musician, speech pathologist episcopal-enthusiast, and keeper of a team of giant cats and a dog. This one got a little over-specific in the symbolism, but it was still fun:

doodles and scraps

Just a few things I put together in my spare time recently:

The first couple of bands are nothing, but I did enjoy the fish. I like how befuddled they look:
I've never been a person who practices. I'm not a practicer. Practitioner. Whatever. I tend to start drawing, and I either like what I'm doing, and consequently keep working until I have a finished product of reasonable quality, or I decide I don't like it, and I throw it on the floor.
With some of my art stuff, however, practice is just a requirement. These are the product of that necessity:





As of about a year ago, Celtic spirals were an entirely new concept to me, and while it's not difficult to learn how to freehand them, it's not something that came to me intuitively. Practice was inevitable. The same can be said of Celtic/Norse animal motifs. Making an animal design usually involves being able to imagine a body/limb/wing/head shape and formation that could never and should never actually occur in the natural world. I'm still getting the hang of it.

For the record, spirals are easier than animal designs. With the spirals, there's really only four or five different tricks to choose from - perhaps more to the point, there are definite and finite tricks to choose from. With animal motifs, the only rules seem to be:
1) There should be an animal in there, the general phylum of which should be identifiable.
2) That animals limbs, and probably its torso, should not contain any bones or limited length.
3) Alcohol.

Old work samples

Some of my bygone stuff, 3 years old or more. As is readily apparent, "ring knots" were my forte for quite a while. I still enjoy them, but a guy can only draw circles and only circles for so long.

This was my first ring knot. A gift for my sister.

More ring knot practice:
There's an artist who does some really incredible Celtic work by the name of Christina Stoppa. It was in homage to her amazing work that I did this one:

"Snow Globe Knot." A gift for my mother.



That's all for now. More tomorrow.

-N.

Open for Business!

Greetings citizens of the Internet! My name is Nick, and I'm a Celtic artist. My specialty is traditional Celtic knots and spirals, but my work ranges from the very traditional to the very modern, and I'm expanding my repertoire all the time. I also dabble in Norse motifs, which are similar to the Celtic in patterns and themes, though somewhat different in terms of style.
Eventually, my aim to is establish a real website for people to browse my work, shop for prints and other custom merchandise, and contact me with questions or commissions. For the moment, however, I have no available funds for such an endeavor. Hence, Blogger!
On this site, you will be able to find examples of my past work, as well as new pieces that come along as I continue to work. Posts with new art will be posted periodically, though since I'm also a full-time graduate student and TA, my time available for producing art just for the fun of it is limited.
If you like what you see here, and you think you might be interested in commissioning a piece from me, please don't hesitate to contact me. My rates are very reasonable, and I work quickly.

Enjoy!