A good friend commissioned this piece for her husband as he had just recently submitted his PhD thesis and this quote was a key part of his theme. The script is Uncial and there are small thistles inside the illuminated initial M.
© Letizia Morley 2018The next step after sketching out the Celtic knots and going over the pencil with archival ink was to draw in the thistles and rabbits that my client wanted. 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.
The first stage of this illuminated calligraphy 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.
I just love Celtic knot designs so much! The possibilities are endless. I have been experimenting with colours. Here I used three shades of both the blue and the brown which seemed more interesting to me than just flat even colour.
Happy 2018! I usually go to bed relatively early on New Year’s Eve for some reason.
Trying to get back to my artwork after the holidays is a little difficult since my kids have been off school since the 22nd of December and it’s HARD to get things done when they’re home all day. However, I managed to eke out this design the last few days and am happy with it. I will put it on some products in my Zazzle shop and hope it sells!
The design comes from a medieval Greek illuminated manuscript that I adapted to make more Scottish.
Hot off the press! I just finished this illuminated calligraphy piece yesterday in preparation for making some Christmas cards on my Zazzle shop. This has passages from Isaiah 7 and 9 about Immanuel, the Son of God. I used the Uncial script, which dates to the 3rd century and was developed in the British Isles. The Celtic Knot is Scottish in style. I am pretty happy with how this turned out and plan to make more like it.
From the archives, an early illuminated calligraphy work I did for my husband. He asked me to do this as a decoration for his classroom. The font, or script, is called Fraktur Miniscule, in use from about 1400 onward and very popular for vernacular works at the time. I used a Celtic Knotwork tutorial book to do the border. I used felt-tip pens instead of paint.
