Sketches

I've completed the design sketches and have done some practice calligraphy for the County Scroll I'm working on.  I'm planning on a few more practice runs at the calligraphy before I break out the good paper and start on the final piece.

I've also completed all 37 sketches for the illuminations for my Beowulf project.  There are two illuminations that I'm going to go back and redo as I'm not happy with they way they currently look.

Isaac

Progress & a Commission

I've made some good progress on the Beowulf Project illuminations. I now have 26 drawn out and another still in the layout stages.

Last week I was asked if I was interested in doing a County award "scroll" with a deadline of mid March. I agreed after talking a little bit more to the person that was playing intermediary. I was given the following to go by, the Recipient like lions, armor, fighting and viking stuff.

So, after stewing on those ingredients, I settled on a style and layout. The Old English Hexateuch, Cotton Claudius B.iv is what I'll be basing my drawings and lettering off of. Cotton Claudius B.iv has some really great fighting depictions as well as Kings ruling, a favorite for this award scroll from what I found by looking at a few online galleys of other artists work.

My layout is going to be two columns that each represents a page. I'm going to be leaving plenty of space between each column so when the art is framed it can have two picture windows and really give the illusion of being two pages. I'm going to be doing two illuminated scenes per "page". The first page will have the Recipient fighting in a tourney and then ruling in a court type fashion. The second page will feature a six figure melee and the Recipient receiving the title of Earl.

I currently have all four scenes drawn out on drawing paper, initial letters drawn to their full size, and the text typed out for easy reference when I go to practice the calligraphy.  I hope to have everything drawn and calliged by the end of the month.

Isaac

A Book about the Christina Psalter...

I recently picked up a book, for my ever growing library, on the Christina Psalter written by Dr. Marina Vidas, an Adjunct Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Copenhagen.  The Christina Psalter (GKS 1606, 4°, The Royal Library, Copenhagen) is a thirteenth-century Parisian manuscript and the book by Dr. Vidas covers the history of the Psalter, its liturgical and other functions, missing illuminations and text, the stylistic and iconographic similarities between the Psalter and other books from the period.

So far it's been an interesting and enjoyable read. The book does contain a few color images of the Psalter as well as some grayscale ones of other manuscripts that Dr. Vidas also talks about.

Images of the Christina Psalter can be found online here.

Isaac