Swaggitude

The holiday season, for me, extends more or less from my birthday on October 30 through Christmas and its surrounding celebrations. This year, considering my constant focus on improving my art, people were not at a loss for what to get me. (Nor was I at a loss to get myself. I bought a few of these things, much to the chagrin of people shopping for me.)
My art supplies:

Additions to my collection include:
-3 new Bristol pads of varying size
-A big sheet of parchment
-A pound of scrap vellum (goat, sheep, deer, and calf, for comparison)
-A book on the Book of Kells, a book on the Lindisfarne Gospels, and a Celtic art instructional book
-Five tiny little synthetic sable brushes with differently shaped tips
-An imitation gold leaf starter kit
-A gold leaf kit
-Wood carving tools (chisels, sanding sponges)
-Jewelry-making tools (bezels, epoxy, exacto-knife, a smoother/flattener thing, tape for laminating)
-Metallic paints in a variety of colors
-Refillable calligraphy brush
-calligraphy quill pen set
-Extra ink refills for my technical pen

I've gotten so much swag this year, I feel compelled to find a big pirate treasure-chest to keep it in. Maybe I'll ask for that next year. Thank you Mom, Katie, Caitlin, Cheryl, Joe, Jake, Marcess, and Self. Your contributions will not be wasted.

Songs of the Hunt (line-art)

I've been away from the blog for a while, and this is why. About a month ago, I drew the following template/outline:

I wanted to start putting together an insular-style piece using the kind of columnar layout that can be found in the Book of Kells, the Lindisfarne Gospels, and a few other insular manuscripts. I like the look of that layout, and though I still don't know what the words will be, I've thought that it's a really nice design for framing a small amount of text in a larger illumination.

So, school ended and I went to work.

As is my habit, I went through my process of filling in each space, first designing and redesigning the animal-patterns that were to form the bulk of the image with a pencil, and then going over the final pencil designs with a technical pen (my wonderful Signo bit 0.18).

In the columns, and the circles above, you can see dogs and birds, as well as traditional Celtic spiral patters and basic interlace. The people at the bottom, with their flutes and their books, represent the scribes and bards relating the glory, the madness, and the humor of the hunt, with the spirals representing their music and the clearer images of the dogs and birds representing the tales. I don't usually go for themes or particular motifs in my work, but when you're doing traditional Celtic illumination, dogs, birds, and people tend to be most of what you have to work with and the theme kind of emerges on its own.
At the top, you can see more animal patterns (including the big oafish head of my own St. Bernard, Darwin). Also, at the bottom of the image above, you can see in the little circles a different kind of Celtic patterning called "steps," which were common in insular art, though completely new to me. Actually, along the sides of the outer columns, I used a so-called "fret" pattern, which is also traditional, but a novel thing in my art. I was full of experimentation with this thing.
The chest (so-called because I think it looks like a big traveling case) at the bottom of the design was...mixed. I wasn't terribly happy with how the three sections at the top came out, but the derivations from the Lindisfarne Gospels on the left and right came out really well, and the circular area in the middle is something I'm really pretty pleased about, mostly because it's simultaneously very different and also very me.
So the line-work is finished. All in all, I have no idea how many hours it took me. Not more than 70, but not less than 50, I should think. And it's not over yet. Once I feel ready, this will be painted, which will take...god, I don't even want to think about how long. A long time. But if it goes well, it'll be worth it.
Here's a scanned copy of the design, with much higher resolution. If you do a right-click and say "View image," you should get a (very) large view of the line-work, which makes it a bit easier to see the details.

(p.s., Because I have no life and am a dork, I counted: including the 6 humans, this thing contains 169 animals. Pretty remarkable when you consider that the whole thing is 5.5"x10.5")

More jewelry practice

Greetings, subjects of Earth. I've returned from my working hiatus, and have more goodies to post.
I've been practicing with the jewelry equipment my sister bought me, and I've actually put together a couple of new pieces that I've been pleased with. The first is a pendant for my lovely wife, Caitlin, complete with her first initial and some Gerber Daisies (which she quite enjoys):
My inspiration for this piece came from this amazing tutorial: Illuminated 'P' by ~somk. Obviously I've got a lot of work to do before I can produce work of that quality, but I've taken a few baby-steps on that road, beginning with buying myself a wonderful set of tiny itty-bitty brushes, and receiving a bunch of varied Celtic art supplies for Christmas (which I'll probably be posting about on Friday).

The second and more recent attempt was this pair of earrings for my sister, for Christmas and also to thank her for sending me down this jewelry-infested avenue:
They came out pretty well, I think. Quite simple, but pretty and very homemade gift-looking.

I've learned a couple of lessons from these projects that might be useful to any of you looking to try this at home:
1) Make sure to laminate both sides of your image, otherwise the epoxy seeps into the paper and dulls the colors.
2) If you mix the epoxy more slowly and gently, you end up with fewer bubbles and better visibility. As the inimitable Katie Cragoe put it, you're not making a souffle.
3) Make sure to mix the epoxy thoroughly. If it's not fully mixed, it won't dry all the way, and you'll have to apply another layer on top which takes an extra day of drying, and sometimes doesn't work if your bezel is already too full.

That's it on jewelry. More to come on the recent illumination project.

I would walk 500 miles

Just, so you know I'm not completely slacking off, this is what's happening around here:

Yeah...I'm not a prolific artist, but it's not for lack of trying. It just takes me forever and ever to finish these bigger pieces.

Thor Mjollnir Tattoo design

Hooray for finals being (almost) over! It's pretty satisfying to be back in the saddle. I'm still working on the other illumination piece, but that's going to take me forever and ever, so I figured I'd so something a little simpler in the meantime.

I'm calling it "Thor: Norse God of Looking Sinister and Pissed."

A Pendant!

So, in the weeks preceding this blog's birth, I'd been trying to figure out how to move toward professionalization in my art. My sister, a professional artist in the making, gave me some good advice. Art on paper is not hard to find, and especially with design-work like mine, people are much more interested in art on things - carving, sculpture, etc.
So for my birthday, she made me a jewelry kit. It contained all the basic tools I'd need to start putting my art into pendants and earrings. I was crazy busy in the weeks following my birthday, but finals are almost over, and having a bit more time on my hands, I finally got around to trying out my kit.

Step 1: draw the thing.
Step 2: Color the thing, and laminate it with clear packaging tape.
Step 3-5ish: Assemble the tools. Cut the thing out to the proper size. Mix the epoxy in a disposable container, and put a little epoxy into the bezel, followed by the thing, followed by more epoxy.
Step 6: Let it sit for at least 12 hours, probably longer. Don't touch it. My sister was adamant about this.
Step 7: Appreciate the thing you made. Except...I think I did something wrong with the epoxy, because it came out all bubbly, and you can't really see the design from more than a foot away. Oh well. Live and learn.

Busy time

Hey, Internetites. I'm sorry to say, I don't have any art to post today. I'm in the midst of finals, and haven't picked up a pen in days.
I did want to point out a couple of cool things, though:

1) In order for a piece of art to be properly called an "illumination," it must be painted at least partially with actual gold. I've gotta learn how to use gold leaf...
2) The monks who painted the old Celtic manuscripts actually put together the pages based on a process that is surprisingly similar to my own, using almost the same tools. (Except for photoshop, obviously.) They started with empty vellum, which they punctured to create the borders and general shape of the designs. This was followed by pencil (sort of) sketches of a grid on the vellum, so that the designs could be created symmetrically and carefully in terms of space distribution. Then they did the designs in pencil, painted over them with small pens made from feathers or reeds and dyes from tree bark, minerals, berries, etc., and then applied the gold overlay to the important bits. Most importantly for me: none of this is prohibitively difficult, or lost to antiquity. I could do this, today.
3) All the animals in the Celtic manuscripts are drawing with big, circular eyes, so they all look constantly surprised.

I'll try to get back on the ball soon. Final paper and exam happening on Tuesday, and then my schedule is (slightly) more my own again.