Blog 2010 WEEK 29 00718-0724: Recent Art 2010 #160, "Masked Griffins"

"Masked Griffins", drawn with a goose quill painted with acrylic paints on Strathmore Bristol paper, size 11 x 7.5" / 277 x 192 mm. Signed July 22, 2010.  This auction is for the actual original artwork itself--not a print. The design was drawn with a pencil, first a sketch, then more fully, to work out the weaving, make sure it all works. I had done a single griffin earlier this year, and wanted to see how it looks when repeated. I could imagine how the wings tip to tip, and their curves to the shoulder would look, and I could see how the neck would make a nice shape. But I wanted to work out the knot design to see where to cross it over from one to the other, while keeping the ends of the ears and the tails in order, without mixing them up by crossing them in the wrong place.  The knot pattern on one side corresponds to that on the other, though you can see that it is freely drawn, and not mechanically produced, which gives the drawing more interest. Where one strand passes over another, or crosses part of the animal pattern, it crosses under in the opposite side. All the knots are ears and tails, the tails end in tassels. Like lion's tails. The ears end in knobs, under the wings, above the larger knobs which mark the start of the tails. Which tail belongs to which animal? Which tail belongs to each? You are supposed to follow the path of the knot and find out. Also, check that there are no fragments of knotwork other than the tails and ears, and no broken paths or dead ends-- all part of designing a Celtic pattern like this--and of appreciating it. I like to improvise the patterns in the wings, a feature of Celtic design in the ancient manuscript illuminations which I have always enjoyed. Here I made a pattern of zigzag line across the bar on the wing, made the triangles into arrowheads and painted them with dots.  I went over the design in iron oxide red pigment, with the quill, and erazed the pencil. Then filled in the background, first with a grey wash, then rust-red wash, and went arounng the animals and the outer edges with burnt umber. After this I painted the yellows, blues, violet, and orange. then went over the edges of the animals and cells contained by the knots with black line, drawn with a brush. A good day's work, I reckon, spread over the past couple of weeks.