Recently an acquaintance asked me to do an illuminated calligraphy piece for her new baby. She wanted wall art that included Celtic knots, thistles and rabbits with a colour scheme of coral, blue and green. I am hoping there are more clients who are interested in this kind of thing for either their own children or as gifts. The finished product was something I was very happy with and my client felt the same way, thankfully.
The first stage of this work began with my sketching out lightly in pencil the Celtic knot border. I had to look through many design templates to find what worked best for the dimensions of the paper and the style that the client wanted. The Celtic knots took quite a lot of practice…quite a lot
The next step after the Celtic knots and going over all the pencil with archival ink was to drawing the thistles and rabbits. These took hardly any time at all, with a few reference photos. I began to put paint on the piece after I had gone over all the pencil marks with black Sumi ink (Sumi is a Japanese coal ink that is very thick and long-lasting). I used Winsor & Newton watercolours.
© Letizia Morley 2018
Lastly, the blue green Celtic knots were filled in and the spaces between the lines painted in coral. Then the thistles were finished and voila!
Letizia Morley - ARTIST 