After many many hours of work, here is the final result. The first image is the work before framing and the second is the work at the exhibit in St Leonards Chapel on South Street, St Andrews.
(See previous posts for the process):
© Letizia Morley 2019
My first overseas customer ordered this custom border along with the verses. She asked for thistles and celtic knots with a mostly blue colour scheme.
This is a version of a ‘carpet page’ decoration in the Book of Durrow, an 8th century illuminated manuscript from the British Isles done in the Insular style. Carpet pages were pages where the illumination filled the entire space rather than having a mixture of writing and painting, and also the image looks rather like a carpet.
A recent digital painting of pink, white and yellow tulips. I get so much joy each year when the tulips emerge. 
The next stage after painting in the watercolour portions was to start filling in all the vines in the border and the inside of the initial capital letter with Liquitex acrylic gold ink. I had to do a couple layers as this was a bit thin in texture. I need to experiment more with different types of gold paint in the future. I’m not to the level of gold leaf yet but admire those who can manage it.
Continuing on from the Stage 1 post for this piece, I show you now what the border drawing looked like when all filled in. In the two subsequent photos you’ll see the colour being gradually added, using Winsor & Newton watercolours. I wanted to give each ‘direction’ in the Psalm its own colour variation. The top is light blue to represent heaven, the bottom is a murky black-blue to represent Sheol. The left is the rosy-tinted East and the right is the slightly more orange-toned red. The ‘flame’ pattern at the bottom also hints at Sheol.
This April (April 15-18, 2019) the Transept Artists’ group of the University of St Andrews Institute of Theology, Imagination and the Arts is putting on its annual exhibition. This year’s theme is ‘Space( )Between’, based on Holy Saturday but also more generally exploring the in-between places and states of being we all experience. I am part of Transept this year, despite not being a student in ITIA and have thoroughly enjoyed my time with this group.
When thinking about which Scripture passages I could use to go along with this theme, I decided upon a portion of Psalm 139 which describes the infinite space that God’s presence occupies and also mentions hell (Sheol). It encompasses the upmost heights and the deepest lows.
I decided to go with an elaborate illuminated calligraphy piece and over a few posts I’ll be showing you the progress of the work.
