Over the course of the past few days, I've been working like a fiend to complete this piece:
It was a lot of work.
A lot of work. The tools included three synthetic sable brushes of varying size and shape, though all tiny; a set of 12 regular acrylics; a set of 6 metallic acrylics; and finally, an ink design on standard sketchbook paper from about 9 months ago. Not a complicated set of tools, but a big job nonetheless. The design measures about 5.5"x8.5".
It went pretty well, over all. At the end of the process, my hand still isn't as steady as I'd like it to be, but it's much steadier than it was, and I've come to understand better how the bristles on my brushes react to pressure, movement, wet paint, drying paint, etc.
I learned some very useful lessons from this process. Probably the most important was to keep a clean brush, and always keep an eye out for the paint drying on the palette (in my case a piece of cardboard covered in packaging tape). When the paint gets dry enough, it starts clumping - it will still transfer from the brush to the page, but not when or how you want it to. In short, it becomes exceptionally difficult to control. Since acrylic dries so fast, using just a little at a time on the palette seem to be the best way to go.
Also very useful to note, in regards to this style of work: in the design phase,
do not make lines, make cells. A line is just what is sounds like: a segment of solid-color ink. Lines are problematic, because it's difficult to paint over them (while maintaining the line) and it's more work to paint around them. A "cell" is better. A cell is a space with lines on either side that you can fill with color(s). Since I'm not used to painting, this has never been an issue, but I will need to get in the habit of doing cells rather than lines from now on.
(You can see in the image below where I ran into this problem in the "S".)
Another beginner lesson that I learned the hard way: just because red goes with yellow, and yellow goes with blue, and white goes with anything, doesn't mean all these things should be combined in the same painting. It all looks pretty good, but I do wish I'd used less white, and I feel like the red and the blue are competing for space, when originally it was supposed to be all red and yellow with some blue bars for a kind of color-kick.
This was a maddening piece to do. It involved an incredible amount of patience, a virtue of which I've never possessed much. Toward the end, I was really starting to lose it.
However, it gave me an interesting perspective on the insular manuscripts that were the inspiration for this piece. The Christian monks who produced the Celtic insular manuscripts believed that the written word was the highest form of prayer, since every word written on the page was the direct word of God. They believed that because written words (and their accompanying illuminations) were the most holy of relics, the holiest act for a scribe would be to fit as much writing and illumination on each page as possible.
Whole monasteries would work together to produce the amazing manuscripts we know today, devoting year after long year to creating these incredibly complicated and beautiful pieces of art. When I was working on this piece, sequestered as I was in my office, I started trying to put myself in the mindset of these 7th-9th century monk-scribes, and there are some remarkable parallels between doing this kind of art and living the "good" Christian life. For each, the actor has to be extremely careful, move slowly and have patience, lest a hasty mistake is made. It's certainly possible for one to speed up, to take more risks, and maybe it will still turn out fine in the end, but each tiny mistake - insignificant though it may seem by itself - detracts from the delicate interconnection and beauty of the finished work.
Also interestingly, from my more agnostic and social scientific perspective, it's a great illustration for how I see religion in general - creating something incredibly complicated in service of a silent and unknown deity while latently stumbling onto some fundamentally secular truths about how to live life is a pretty appropriate metaphor.
Now that's all done. On to the next monster.
This second is a tattoo design for an old high school teacher of mine, combining three of his things: Metallica, WWII, and Batman. (My high school teacher is a dork, but a very cool one.)
This was a bookmark that a friend from college wanted to give as a gift to her boyfriend, another old friend. The Ogham writing in the middle reads "DRH" for David's initials. He actually requested the bookmark, which is pretty exciting. I've never had that happen before. It's acrylics and metallic acrylics on parchment, and laminated.
And finally, a revision of the personal logo for Jared (aka "Sablehawk") including the shield with the tree that he's using for his website. My impression is that he'll be using this as his avatar on a gaming site he's setting up.
