Aidan's Weekly

DURROW SPIRALS

2011-05-22T02:56:00.000-07:00

For sale, unframed: “Durrow Spirals”, 11” x 17” / 28 cm x 44 cm, offset lithograph print on a beautiful, dimpled ivory white Wokey Hole mould made paper, double sized, deckle edged, ltd. edition first published 1981 in Glastonbury England. This Artist Reserve print is signed and numbered XX/100 .

I painted a copy of this print for the cover of my book, Celtic Design: Spiral Patterns. The black and white design is also reproduced in that book, in a smaller size. This print was reproduced at the same size size as of the original freehand drawing.

On sale now, $25 for print, unframed: http://mypage.direct.ca/a/ameehan/p/0039/index.html

Recent Artworks for Sale

2011-05-14T03:02:00.000-07:00

FIERY STEEDS

Aidan Meehan orig Celtic painting FIERY STEEDS, signed 2010.08.04. Goose quill, 140 # CP double sized watercolour paper. Drawn with goose quill and brush, acrylics paints on Fabriano Artistico paper. Size 9" x 9" : 200 mm x 200 mm . Ships flat with acid-free backing and stiff card support.

The original artwork is for sale, not framed.

[ref: ra10183]

My Artwork Auctions May 11 2010

2011-05-11T19:05:00.000-07:00

GRIFFIN KNOT

“Griffin Knot” signed Aidan J. Meehan 2010.08.01. 7” x 5” / 140 x 90 mm . Quill and brush, acrylics paints on Fabriano Artistico paper. [ref: ra10181]

DANCERS

“Dancers”, signed Aidan J. Meehan 2010/08/01: Media, Goosequill, brush, acrylic on Fabriano Atistico paper. Size 5” 3/4 x 6” / 145 x 150 mm. The two figures have pink and yellow hair and the coils of hair join the outside border in triple spirals. The legs and arms of the dancers are woven so thay both form a Celtic knot.

4-DRAGON SQUARE

Aidan Meehan original artwork. “Barbtail Dragons in Square”, the original piece of artwork signed by Aidan Meehan, 2010.08.01. Size 4.7” x 5” / 119mm x 125 mm. Drawn directly with a Canada goosequill, acrylics on Fabriano Artristico paper. [ref. ra10172]

2ND QUARTER MOON

2nd-Quarter Moon, 2010.07.29 6.25” x 5.44” / 160mm x `140 mm. Canada goose quill, sable brush, transparent acrylics, Fabriano Artristico paper.

I put this together for an eBay auction, the frame is a small photo frame I scanned and resized to fit the artwork. I overlaid a transparent watermark, which happily looks like a rteflection of the glass in this imaginary frame! Had to remember to mention in the ad that this auctino was for the artwork alone, frame not included!

The design is a study for a small carpet page design I did last year. I plan to work it up, develop each detail as an independent piece, on a larger scale. I am in no hurry.

(ra10171)

The Guid Man's Acre

2010-12-02T02:32:00.000-08:00

I came into the garden one autumn day,
A Belfast boy tattered and wild.
The gardener there knew me,
He took kindly to me,
And brought me in, like his own child.

He showed me the garden, a sweet scented maze,
And a copper beech hedge he had made
Round the Guid Man's Acre,
Where my caretaker
Was glad to abandon his trade.

For the rest of the garden was tended and neat,
But here was all let to grow free.
From deep in the thicket
Of field mouse and cricket,
I felt unseen eyes upon me.

My time in that garden taught me to feel
That the only possession I need
Is earth, my foundation,
In endless rotation
Sunwards, under my feet.

-- Aidan Meehan, Vancouver BC, New Year's 1981.

Carpool

2010-09-09T06:25:00.000-07:00

CARPOOL

The summer's ended now. It rained all week.

We drove up Main Street to a cloudy sky-

line, two in front and two in back, all dry

in Odette's ark we braved the flood sans leak.

The street kept rising towards the overcast

autumnal grey horizon to the south.

The windscreen fogged, the dashboard fan's conked out.

That's how it goes. These old machines don't last.

We're dining on Odette's whim. So to speak.

Her fridge was bare, Barrie's was on a fast,

while ours was starved of staples and felt weak-

all three in the same boat, till she dropped by.

That carpool fuelled by hunger was no doubt

what having friends indeed is all about.

Aidan Meehan, Vancouver BC, 2010.09.09, 07:00

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

2010-08-11T03:11:00.000-07:00

"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.

2010-06-11T00:07:00.000-07:00

CELTIC AND ASTURIAN KNOTS

Reecntly posted 12 knots to Aidan Meehan Celtic Design on facebook , (Recent Artwork album, #s 64-75)

(if you are on Facebook, you are welcome to join me there)

Celtic Knot, showing 5 x 2 dot grid and a breakline joining 2 dots in the middle of the grid, forming the path of the knot. This is the method of Celtic knot design used in the earliest Celtic manuscripts, from about the mid-7th century (from Book of Durrow onwards).

Asturian Knot #1 showing the same method of construction, based on a 10th-century manuscript from Spain.

Asturian Knot #2.

Same method, based on a 9 3 dot grid, with 3 horizontal break lines on the across the middle, and 2 horizontal breaks above and below. The top and bottom break lines span 3 dots each, the ones in the middle join two dots on either side, and 3 dots in the middle.

You can count the number of spaces by reading at the dots from left to right along the middle.

On the far left is a free-floating dot, followed by a break line connecting 2 dots, then a longer break across 3 dots, then another 2, and lastly another free single dot: 1+2+3+4+1=9. Since each of thse dots is a mid point of a square, you can tell this is a squre grid of 9 cells across.

If you look at the ends on this knot, you can see 3 dots clearly visible one above the other, and so the grid is 3 rows deep and 9 column across. That's what I called this a 9 x 3 grid. Given the grid, you can reproduce the dots, and join the corresponding dots on your grid where you see the breaklines on this knot. Then you can trace the path of the knot around the dots and breaklines, with a pencil, and weave the knot with pairs of lines running parallel to the line of the path. Then ink the crossovers sectment by segment, and fill in the background. With practice, you can do this without pencil.. place dots with ink, and do it all in one go.

(to be continued)

These knots have been posted to eBay a few dasy already, auctions closing in the next day or two<: CHECK IT OUT!/p>

20100519: Tribute to Yehudi Menuhin

2010-05-19T19:23:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-iuSgXKUcw&feature=related

Yehudi Menuhin performs Beethoven violin concerto, in 1962 at the International Concert Hall, with the London Symphony under Colin Davis.

This version takes me back to my introduction to this great violin concerto, listening to it on vinyl. Since then, I have learned to love Menuhin, as a great man and as a modern artist. You either love him or hate him. Some judge his later work as technically inferior to his juvenile acheivement, but I think this is dumb. He wanted to get away from technique as an artistic end, to play the instrument without artifice, to make it real. He was a modernist in the age of expressionism, and was interested in the rough edges, taming them, relishing each discovery, tearing sounds out of the violin that had had never been heard before--at least, not on the polished boards of great concert stages.

To judge his virtuosity by strictly technical standards is inappropriate, there is more to art than that, and Menuhin dared to go beyond his own limits, to explore new ground, just as Dylan did in going electric.

Those who judge his later work by his early standards are wrong to judge by that, he rejected those standards, according to his own judgement, which ought to be respected. He may not be to everyone's taste, but that kind of judgement is a matter of taste, after all. Children who dislike spicy foods because their own taste is restricted, should not be allowed to govern other's fare.

Menuhin offended pretensions, and affronted musical prejudice, as fits a great artist. His performance of Bach's Ciaccona strikes me as the audio equivalent to Picassos' Guernical, a protest against the inhumanity of war. And his gesture of playing under on a Berlin stage still reeking from crimes against humanity-- especially so under Furtwangler, who was universally snubbed as a pariah for conducting in Berlin throughout the war-- is to me a moving demonstration of his own great humanity, revealing the full measure of Menuhin the man, as well as artist.

BLOG 2010 WEEK 16: Recent Art Stag with Shackle Worm and Phoenix

2010-04-22T04:48:00.000-07:00

Recent Artwork (2010), by Aidan Meehan: #003. Stag with Shackle Worm and Phoenixm . Original drawing, not a reproduction! Signed and dated February 27th, 2010. 28x22 cm goose quill and home-made oak-gall ink on 100% cotton rag paper.

The third in this series of line drawings oulined in a heavy contour, the phoenix inspired by a design on a Mammen-style axehead; the shackle worm, or small dragon from London under Dane law, a gravemarker at St Paul's; and a stag to match, of my own invention, though based on the MAmen-style Great Beast (or Danish Royal Lion) of the same site, the tail treatment especially so. I feel I have improved the design of the Phoenix, and made it my own.

I posted it on my Facebook page, with a sales price of $105, including shipping, first-come-first serve- got many nice comments but no takers. So I am posting on eBay, auction ending April 26th.

http://cgi.ebay.ca/Aidan-Meehan-Celtic-Art-Original-003-Stag_W0QQitemZ260589153398

BLOG 2010 WEEK 01: 0101-0109: The Boys of Mullabawn

2010-01-09T12:10:00.000-08:00

I opened the book, More Irish Street Ballads (The Three Candles, Dublin, 1965) at The Boys of Mullabawn. I presume this is the same Mullaghbawn not far from Newry City, Ireland.

It's a track I remember hearing years ago on a tape called Songs Out of Oriel, recorded by the sons of Irish musicologist, Sean O'Baoill, whose daughter, Eilis, was our friend and neighbour for many years. My father sent me these recordings, as a keepsake from home.

He also sent me a copy of Sean O’Baoill’s book, called Ogham, The Poet's Secret, all about 20-character Irish alphabetic cipher (as referring to the 20-note scale of the harp), published posthumously by his sons, who also recorded the Songs Out of Oriel, which included their arrangement of the Boys of Mullabawn.

Oriel is the old, poetic name for the part of Ulster stretching along the east west axis from Down to Fermanagh.

I remember Mullabawn only as the place where some classmates came from. The song as the O'Baoills recorded it, has a haunting air, and I was very pleased to find it in this book.

More Irish Street Ballads has some other songs from Newry district, such as, The Newry Prentice Boy and The Newry Highwayman. The Boys from Mullabawn is in the a sad, romantic scale key of E flat.

The book, by the way, written by Colm O'Lochlainn, is beautifully designed and illustrated with woodcuts throughout the book, including 7 by Thomas Bewick, lent by Miss Pauline Bewick of Dublin, a descendent of his.

I copied the score of the song into my songbook, and scanned it here. The staves have been rearanged to fit the phrasing of the ballad.

The Boys of Mullabawn

I beg your pardon ladies, and ask you this one favour,
I hope it is no treason on you I must now call,
I'm condoling late and early, my heart is nigh to breaking,
All for a noble lady that lives near Mullabawn.

Squire Jackson he's unequalled for honour and for reeason,
He never turned a traitor, nor betrayed the Rights of Man,
But now we are in danger, from a vile deceiving stranger,
Who has ordered transportation for the Boys of Mullabawn.

As those heroes crossed the ocean, I'm told the ship in motion
Would stand in wild commotion as if the seas ran dry;
The trout and salmon gaping, as "The Cuckoo" left her station,
Saying "Fare you well, old Erin, and the hills of Mullabawn."

So to end my lamentation, we are all in consternation
None cares for recreation until the day do dawn;
For without hesitation, we are charged with combination
And sent for transportation from the hills of Mullabawn.

BLOG 2009 WEEK 47: 1115-1121 A Poem:The Wonder

2009-11-21T00:23:00.000-08:00

THE WONDER

Back in '77, one Indian summer
afternoon, his sister Margrit came
to visit with her child, then 2-years-old.
He took them out to Stanley Park, to see
the giant firs around the Lost Lagoon.

As they were walking by the water's edge
the child fell in the lake, and sank like stone.

His sister froze in shock. He scanned the lake;
the child had disappeared, without a trace.
The lake was smooth as glass, the bottom grey;
the clay mud angled sloping steeply down,
then fell away fast, plunging out of sight.

The vanished child could drown at any time,
but Marge and he had never learned to swim.
So he stepped forward, onto the water.
A few steps farther, still there was no sign,
but then he heard a submarine child's voice
that sounded small as insects wings around
behind his head and coming from the right.

He spins around, looks down, and there appears
a row of rippling wavelets at his feet
like shining grains of shimmering silver sand
vibrating on a perspex drum. He reaches
his left hand in to find his niece's head,
and hauls her up to air. He hands the girl
to Marge and she and child begin to scream,
the girl more scared by Marge's fearful yells.

Too crazed by shock Marge never stops to wonder
that only his left coat sleeve is soaked through.

Aidan Meehan

091009 Fri. 17:30

BLOG 2009 WEEK 46: 1108-1114 SAVITRI

2009-11-14T18:31:00.001-08:00

I finally sorted Myspace. Here is the first song from Music of Aidan recorded at Findhorn Studios in 1974; the title is from the name of a poem by Sri Aurobindu, the lyrics are based on words from his poem of that name.

SAVITRI

Into this fallen
human sphere they came,

Faces that wore
the immortals' glory still

Voices that still communed
with the thoughts of god

Bodies made beautiful
by the spirit's light,

Carrying
the magic wand,
the mystic fire
the cup of joy:

The sun-eyed children
of a marvelous dawn,
Approaching eyes of
diviner man,

Their tread, one day,
will change this suffering world,

And we shall justify
the light on nature's face.

Words and music by Aidan Meehan, 1974

(you mayhear the MP3 sample of this track at http:// myspace.com/aidanmeehan)

BLOG 2009 WEEK 45: 1101-1107 NEW BEGINNING

2009-11-07T11:55:00.000-08:00

The Celtic new year used to begin at November 1st, the autumn festival of Samhain, as it was called in Irish. I have been falling behind with my blog, and so I am going to leap into the present, and catch as I go along from week to week, to bridge the gap.

This week I have been wrestling with Myspace, which I find very confusing. Its not that I am a complete doofus, I've been designing my own web pages since 1996. I am trying to post music, and it seems that Myspace is set up to do that, only I soon found out that I need to sign up as a musician, and not as a regular person.

I learned all this too late. I had already signed on as a regular, and when I then signed on as a musician, found that Myspace only recognises one profile, and my non-music profile kept popping up when I true to edit the profile on my music page.

So I deleted my first account. Then my music page wa nolonger available. I reapplied, but had to use a different email than the google address I used before. Next thing I am up and running, only when I load up my music onto my music page it doesn't show up. Somehow my old music page had revived, and the track have turned up on the one I thought I had deleted.

I wound up with 2 music pages, but can only install music on the first! I am not sure if I should delete my account altogether and start over. If I delete the first account, will the second disappear also? I do not know. I have already advertised the music I uploaded as supposed to be available on the second one. I think I will just have to start over, and hope it will work out, 3rd time lucky.

Why doesn't facebook just allow people to upload their music? I guess they are afraid that people will upload pirated tracks, and then get sued for allowing it. Meanwhile, muscians are stuck with Myspace. Stay tuned!

BLOG 2009 WEEK 37: 0906-0912 CORACLE VOL 02 .12

2009-09-12T01:14:00.000-07:00

NOW ONLINE AT: http://mypage.direct.ca/a/ameehan/vol02/12/index.html

I am currently gathering material for an in-depth study of the art of flourishing, which is almost complete. I have studies drawn from 10 years of practice, and a lot from historic sources to give an overview from the 16th-18th century, up to the beginning of the modern tradition, starting from George Bickham in the 1740's.

After that, the tradition divides into the period from about 1800 to 1850, when flourishes were still influenced by the use of the quill, and those which, from about 1830 follow from the introduction of the pointed metal nib.

I trace the art itself to roots in the 16th century, leaving aside its development of from its earlier knotwork ornament. I begin with Durer, in 1515, and trace the art him to Bickham through those two centuries, and from around Europe during that time.

The material from this, the copperplate period shows how the art of decorating became commercialized, as penmanship became more intensely linked to bookkeeping and accounting, reflecting the spread of business education through copperplate-printed copybooks.

For better or for worse, the art of flourishing became the business of enterprising penmen schoolmasters, aiming to attract students by offering the art of penmanship as a way to self improvement, financial independence and business success.

This is the basis of the tradition stemming from the first manual produced in north American continent, John Jenkins’ Art of Penmanship. In that book, on the frontispiece, we see the finely flourished swan that was to be copied of the next hundred years, with greater or lesser competence, by thousands of followers. Their accumulated practice is cherished today as Folk art.

Apart from this flourished swan, other motifs, such as the quill, the eagle, the bird in the nest, winged heads, and scrolls, combined with abstract flourished, became the stock in trade through the 19th century.

While I see this growth as more deeply rooted in the early middle ages, I also see it as a new growth beginning in the early 16th century and flowering to the present day. In presenting the history of flourishing from an artist's point of view, I would like to take the opportunity to give a critical assessment of the art form.

I propose to review of the engraved models of flourishing, so as to reinstate the ornaments according to how they may be drawn with the traditional goose quill pen. The artist, taking up this artform, needs models which can be done with the quill, rather than relying on those which have been engraved, or models copied directly from engravings, using the steel pen to replicate the metallic precision of the engraved line.

Many designs which were originally done with the quill, were first translated into copperplate engravings, then replicated by the metal-nibbed pen, exactly reproducing the appearance of printed models. Old-time pen masters benefited in two way by doing this. They saved money on steel plates, by writing business cards or one-off posters, or certificates, that looked as if they had been engraved; and they impressed the public with their prowess—it is impressive to see a drawing which is indistinguishable from a print.

The metal pen nib made this exact appearance of an engraved model possible. The immediate object was to convince the viewer that the penman was qualified to teach penmanship to this highest conceivable degree of attainment in a short time, for a fee, in return for attending his school. In adopting the art flourishing to advertising purposes, and while reproducing it in such a way as to resemble the engraved plate, flourishing was taken over by the steel pen, and adapted to its form, which significantly differs from that of the quill.

The history of calligraphy in the 20th century developed from the idea that writing and lettering, as a whole had degenerated as a consequence of the replacement of the quill by the metal nib, and ought to be reformed by a revival of the use of the quill. Just as the recovery of the quill in the 20th century provided a vital impulse which revived the art of the scribe, the revival of flourishing should be founded on the goose quill as the ideal tool with which to test a model. It is the ideal tool for reconstructing the model from which the engraving was produced. Reconstruction is better rather than just copying the engraving, which may have been tampered with by the engraver.

Engravers tampering with the model compromises the freedom of the pen to execute the design, forcing penlifts and workarounds such as turning the paper to follow the motion of the burin on the plate. Or worse, trying to copy a design which has been engraved in reverse, or printed upside down, or printed white on black.

Black-on-white, or negative imaging became popular in engraving about 150 years ago, and was soon emulated by engrossers by writing white ink on black paper. But this is emulation of lazy or incompetant printers, who rolled ink onto the plate and printed the background black, leaving the envraved line empty, instead of removing the ink from all but the engraved lines, which needs more skill, and takes longer to do. This short-cut was found to be visually effective for classified ads, because it stands out in a page of newsprint and so it was taken up as an advertising gimmick.

Then, when photo-mechanical processing came into vogue, from the 1870s on, photographic negatives were used to produce negative images of the same kind, for graphic effect -- this is just one example of how the engraving process has taken us further away from the purpose of flourishng, that was originally command of hand: that is, direct, spontanaeous, freehand performance of the flourish, with as few penlifts and strokes as possible, with quill and ink-struck with calligraphic gestural freedom.

I would like to show examples of drawings made with the quill, compared with models drawn from engravings, and with a metal pen; to illustrate the different feel of each medium, and to show the natural look of the quill-formed, calligraphic flourish. My approach would illustrate the construction of the flourish, to show how the design my be reproduced more naturally, with greater freedom, and therefore truer art, by using the goose quill.

It would be helpful also to point out bad examples that have been published and republished, since the 19th century. For example, while transcribing flourishes presented by George Becker in the 1870s, I found that some of his models had been misleadingly executed by the engraver, producing shades that can only be reproduced by the pen by lifting it or turning the paper around. Rather than turning the paper in all directions to reproduce illogical shades found in many engraved models, the engraved models can be corrected, and restored to quill-drawn form. Other models were printed in reverse, or upside down. Theses examples cause trouble to calligraphers who try to copy them.

The pen drawing can be demonstrated stroke by stroke, restoring the motifs to their source as aids for learning to use and control the quill, to test its cut, and to test the flow and blackness of the ink. I hope this project will provide a service to future generations of graphic artists, enabling them not only to take part in the revival of this rich calligraphic heritage, but at the same time to learn how to master this most excellent of drawing tools, the original form of the pen from which the art of flourishing arose, the properly-prepared goose quill.

BLOG 2009 WEEK 36: 0830-0905 CORACLE VOL 2.11

2009-09-05T01:13:00.000-07:00

CORACLE VOLUME TWO ISSUE ELEVEN Now online: http://mypage.direct.ca/a/ameehan/vol02/11/index.html

Blog 2009 WEEK 35: 0823-0829

2009-08-29T01:12:00.000-07:00

CORACLE VOLUME TWO ISSUE TEN NOW ONLINE AT: http://mypage.direct.ca/a/ameehan/vol02/10/index.html

Isle of Glass

There is an Isle of Glass
Isle of the blessed, Hy Brasil—In the west;
Ruins of cities chopped off by the sea;
Ancient maps and myths, and mystery.

Who ever knows the truth
Objectively
Can never show the proof
So all agree:
The Torah; The Upanishad; Lao Tse?
Muhammad; Dammapada; Christianity?

There is one myth that's true,
That lights my life,
A golden thread run though vBoth sides alike;
So in and out are equally to me
But oscillations of the unity:

The memory of a Golden Age—
Long gone and yet to come;

The remnant of a divine race
In longboats from the sun—
The memory of a timeless face,
When all the words become
A single trackwayto a field of grass—
Where I am dazzled.

There is a place so clear,
It strikes a chord;
My mind contracting near-
Imagined border—
Here hang the shining fruit upon the tree;
Yonder, ocean, beckoning me.

Here, close at hand
Is certainty,
Here, fertile land;
Yonder the sea.
I am a stream has never known
Beyond its boundary,
Does not shrink back into earth
It’s laboured through so long;
But dissolves, and dying, finds rebirth,
Such a one was never born!

For what is all the knowledge worth
If, when, before a thing is known,
One simple word of what is real
Does all reveal?

There is an Isle of Glass
Isle of the blessed, Hy Brasil—
In the west;
Ruins of cities chopped off by the sea;
Ancient maps and myths, and mystery.

—Aidan Meehan, Jan 1979- Dec 2009

BLOG 2009 WEEK 34: 0816-0822

2009-08-22T01:11:00.000-07:00

CORACLE VOLUME TWO ISSUE NINE NOW ONLINE AT: http://mypage.direct.ca/a/ameehan/vol02/09/index.html

Reading Caesar and Cleopatra, George Bernard Shaw. It's good.

Had a dream in which I heard a piece of music, woke up with the tune in my head. Wrote it down, titled it Marching in the Street, though that is not quite what the music was about. It was in the street— Broadway—and it was a kind of march: It was being sung by a soprano, and people were standing in a crowd, listening to her voice, rather passively. I had in mind also a song of triumph—‘Street March’—but that might as well suggest the idea of a marching tune heard in the street, or performed on a street. The title I gave it sounds like a protest movement. There must be a word for a victory song. Paean, perhaps: a song of praise or triumph. Street Paean? Works for me, but perhaps a bit obscure for anyone else. Should I care? No, titles are just meaningless labels anyway. What does the _name_ of a house matter to its architect? The name is an after thought, used to identify the building, not necessarily a clue to its "meaning". I’m thinking of Irish fiddle tune titles: Scatter the Mud; Billy Barlow; Drive the Cows Home; The Hare in the Corn; Red Stockings; The Silken Wallet; Toss the Feathers; Boiled Goat’s Milk; The Thrush’s Nest; Tie the Petticoat Tighter; Money in Both Pockets; Banish Misfortune; Cherish the Ladies; The Kid on the Mountain; The Man from Newry.

I like Eric Satie’s titles the best.

Blog 2009 WEEK 33 0809-0815: Meaning of Celtic Knots; Mahler's 2nd

2009-08-15T00:23:00.000-07:00

CORACLE VOLUME TWO ISSUE EIGHT http://mypage.direct.ca/a/ameehan/vol02/08/index.html

I have put my best print, Devenish up for sale on my website: http://mypage.direct.ca/a/ameehan/p/0055/index.html

I recently wrote a letter to a correspondent, a clerical student, talking about the symbolism of knotwork, from a cosmolgical view point. With students who are trained in a theological background, I feel comfortable in speaking to them in these terms, which draw upon a way of thinking for which I rarely meet an audience. It is symbolic thinking, and I can draw on my own experience with drawing knots, remembering how significant even the simple act of placing a dot on the blank paper could be to me, it made me imagine the beginning of the universe, the birth of the cosmos. This was my introduction to the intelligibility of form in traditional pattern.

I remember Coomaraswamy's dictum that symbolic art of this kind serves as a support of comntemplation of first principles, and these principles are most naturally expressed in myth and sacred scriptures as accounts of how the world began. Cosmogenesis is a genre of philosophical speculation, which I first met in comparative religious studies, through the writings of Coomaraswamy and Guenon, Schuon and others of that mid-20th century, comparative religion studies group.

How many people still read those authors? I doubt if many ever did, they were an obscure specialist niche within the field of comparative religion even then. But now when I meet a student with a back ground in religious studies, I tend to take advantage of the possibliity that they are familiar enough with the cant of cosmology and ontology to tolerate my airing my speculations and special interest, as an artist, in the subject.

Finished my book of Somerset Maugham stories. Interesting change of style in the last two, Miss King and The Hairless Mexican, from his Ashenden spy series: written in a snappy thriller style, evey sentence a statement of fact, furthering the narrative, like a detective's report, barely relieved by dialogue or descriptive observations.

Miss King is oddly anticlimactic. I did not get it at all on first reading. Maybe I will when I reread it. It seems like a dream, inconclusive and disjointed. The narrative is hard to follow, there are so many characters, he takes the reader to a hotel and lists every guest one after that other, it seems, then introduces Miss King, only to kill her off with a stroke saying only "England", but we don't know what she means by that, it seems we are left to make of it whatever we want. (Could it be that he recorded this story as received in a dream? That would explain the combination of structured story and illogical, disjointed subject).

He speculates, as if to give us a choice of interpretations, but leaves it swinging in the wind--most unsatisfying. Is he parodying the taste of the day for flouting the rules of good story writing, for originality at all cost, the unexpected, for its own sake? He has criticised modern writing often enough, he seems to have come around to it, and perhaps his ambivalence leads him to subvert the form because the times have forced him to adopt it, the market demands it, to prove he is not outdated, but he does it with an ill grace, and yet, despite himself, has fun with it. That would be plausible if he was feeling cynical about literature, the craft of authorship, when he wrote it. The style is infuenced by the spy genre, the mystery novel, the detective story. The lack of plot seems modernistic and existential, Beckett meets James Bond.

I popped into the framer’s, and found they sell canvas stretcher bars, cheaper that de Serres or Opus. Good prices, could maybe buy stretcher bars in bulk from them. It would mean standardising my sizes, do I really want to do that? I don't know that I do.

My gut rebels at the thought of standardising my artwork, bu this may be thoughtless reaction. I recall seeing a photo of Francis Bacon working at a large canvas on which he had a portrait happening that was all ruled out square, but had acres of margin, allowing for possible alterations of proportion as the picture evolved. I could imagine doing a figure, then feeling inspired to add a border, and make the picture bigger. Best to start on a large expanse, and cut the canvas to size after the work is finished so that it does not become cramped by the predetermined size of a canvas that may be too small for the image as it turns out. I have felt this about some canvases I did earlier. Maybe I should try this. I can have the canvas stretched afterwords, if I choose.

Taking the bus home, I found I had time left on my ticket, and so I thought I would go have a coffee and write some music; I had a tune running through my mind all the way there, but when I got to Broadway, and popped into the coffee shop on Commercial there, found I had forgotten my wallet; after ordering a coffee I could not pay for it. The waitress was friendly, said it didn't matter, and I caught the bus back, just in time. But I wrote the song down, on the way up to Broadway, and called it Heat Wave, which it felt like inside that bus.

After 7 months, I can at last write a simple melody in notation now. I am beginning to be able to identify the key signature in my mind, by extending the scale up or down a few notes, to find the half notes, and by counting the whole intervals between one half note and another, I can identify the key note, and write the melody exactly as it comes into my mind.

This is kindergarten music theory, I realise, but I find it very exciting. I wish I had been taught to write music by a competent teacher, when I was a child, beying the tonic solfa we learned in church choir. This is an invisible and almost completely overlooked part of the curriculum. But art af any kind was almost wholly absent from my schooling. We were taught to sing, not to read music. We did into have an art teacher until half way through my secondary school education, in my mid- teens. There was no teaching of playing instruments, instruments, there was no dance at all. I don't supose my schooling was any worse than average, during the 1960s.

Heard a nice tune on the radio, Lou Reed playing a very beautiful guitar riff backing on a feel-good anthem by Bare Naked Ladies's Kevin Hearne, from his new recording, Coma. I'd like to get.

Listening to Posner and Garvelman playing Trimble's arrangements of Irish traditional tunes for 4-hand piano, I like it a lot. It has the freshness of modern classical music, in the traditional of Vaughan Williams, and Percy French, but with the zest of Irish tradition, which I am currently catching up on, as of a few months ago.

Updated my website to reflect addition of the new book, Maze patterns: http://mypage.direct.ca/a/ameehan/t/0006/index.html

I have started collecting together graphics for a study of the devlopment of flourishing with the quill pen 1515-1950. I have 45 pages of illustrations in one collection, and I don't know yet how many more may be turned up.

Listened to Jeno Jando on piano, playing Beethoven. I like the way he plays, he seems to play without obvious interpretation, just lets the music speak for itself. I listen to Beethoven's thought, rather than the pianist's. I think that is the mark of a great classical pianist. He's not to everyone's taste, I know, but his transparent style appeals to me.

Read some Leacock, Sunshine Sketches.

I had forgotten about Mahler. Listening to the opening of his second, the Resurection symphony, is just electifying. I love rock'n'roll bass lines in classical music (Beethoven's 5th, 3rd movement, for example), and this is one. He achieves with massive orchestration what Hendrix achieved with banks of amps, the wall of white noise, in this case, percussion and bass in fusion. Double bass, kettle drums, bottom feeding brass and woodwind supply the underworld substratum from which the first movement struggles to extricate itself in to the light of day. It's a thriller.

I am listening to it on the headphones while writing up the web pages for the Coracle Volume 2 Issue 8.

The reprise of those thunderous bombshells, is even more profoundly abysmal. Then the funeral march picks up again, once again, rising through an imperial death dance to a crescendo that colapses back into the pit whence it came, only to gather all its courage together and climb back out of the grave, defiantly, quickly securing a footing on the surface of the earth, when it pauses, basks in ecstatic wonder as dawn breaks on a vast plane of oceanic relief.

Barely has this registered when a shadow begins to rise from behind the horizon, storm clouds gather, swelling up to mass overhead, where they part, in a slow spiral, broken by sporadic flashes.

Out of this descend slowing winding notes of brass, to a tattoo of kettle drums, then they collapse, and alight, gently, on the earth, and rest.

The second movement opens with a complete change of mood, stately, courtly, romantic waltzing strings introduce a rapid staccato backbeat that scatters the atmosphere.

Out of this, the waltz returns, sounding slightly dazed, less complacent. It sways to a halt. In rolls the staccato, with a heavier ballast, and the waltz rouses itself to compete with it. The two contraries fuse, esplode. Plucked strings pick up the pieces and perform a cabaret carousel that turns around and around, until swept up by the waltz, in full fig, all crinoline and handsome hussars, waving ostrich plumes and fluttering fans, until the dance subsides into a serene caress.

Downloading Kevin Burke's 1999 Solo Fiddle and 1997 Hoof and Mouth albums from eMusic (building a reference library of Irish traditional revival of the last 5o years). I prefer the first, as I am more interested in the traditional fiddle tunes than the more modern folk-rock feel of the original material in the second, though I got a chuckle out of his song, Oedipus Rex, though, off the Hoof and Mouth album.

Blog 2009 WEEK 32: 0802-0808 On Reading Maugham, Truth, Neauty, Goodness

2009-08-08T12:23:00.000-07:00

CORACLE VOLUME TWO ISSUE SEVEN Now online: http://mypage.direct.ca/a/ameehan/vol02/07/index.html

Somerset Maugham’s The Unconquered is a change of scene for him, from the South Seas and the Riviera to wartime Germany, after the fall of the Maginot line. This is the 4th story of his in this selection so far to end in death by drowning. It seems to have been a habit with Maugham. The Rain, The Pool, and Macintosh all end up under water.

My reading was interrupted by a late snack: I pulverised the anchovies remaining in a can opened last week, ground them in a mortar with some paprika and soy, and made a kind of anchovy paste, which I spread on crackers and ate with a thin slice of cheddar covered with antipasto from a jar. It was all very tasty. Surprisingly good. I was glad to find a use for anchovies that have been sitting open in the fridge too long. I was worried they might be going off, but was assured that they smelt no worse than they usually do.

I later read another Maugham story, The Voice of the Turtle, about the prima donna with the funny handle, La Falterona. It ends up with his description of her singing the swan song of Wagner's Isolde. I had to get up, and get the track, and play it over the speakers in the bedroom. I went out like a light, smiling.

Later in the week, I read story after story of Maugham. One morning I got up, looking for another book of short stories containing one by Maugham where it gave his dates birth and death. I did not find it. Instead, all I found was an entry in Whit Burnett's anthology of Greatest Living Authors, in The Worlds Best of 1950, when Maugham was still alive.

A selection from his autobiography was chosen for inclusion, under the title, Truth, Beauty, Goodness. I found it too boring to finish, what I read of it seemed uninspired. His view of beauty, as the end of art, left me cold. He reduced it to aesthetics, with are at best subjective, and change from generation to generation, and from place to place. Having based his definition of beauty on this shifting ground, he has to conclude that beauty, and therefore art, is an elusive and unreliable chimera, unless it serve the greater good of all. I do not agree either that beauty is not objectively definable, or that it should serve a moral imperative, as to serve good is as subjective a motive for art as aesthetics.

Aesthetics is not about beauty, is is about what feels good, or pleases the eye, or tickles the palette, or arouses desire, that is, whatever appeals to the senses. That is no more beauty than it is the deifinition of goodness. Beauty, like goodness, are qualities that can be defined philisophically, and therefore objectively. Goodness can be considered as the object of ethical studies, in the same way that beauty is the object of the artist’s lifework. Aesthetics has to do with what is in fashion, as whatever looks good to the trend setter, or whatever is the undustry standard for the look of the moment, beauty spelled with a small-b, only glamour.

The objective quality of beauty, like mercy, is not strained; it droppeth on the glamourous and unglamourous alike; it is in the heart, not the eye of the beholder; it rings true, because it is real. We cannot define these qualities—truth, reality, goodness—but we know them when we witness them, and they awaken the recognition of their existence in us through those rare encounters with the real, the good, the true, in art.

When we encounter any and all of these qualities (for they are one and the same) in art, we can agree objectively that that is beautiful. It may not be pretty, but it rings true. And not only for us, but for anyone with the capacity to appreciate the real thing—not only today, or for a season, or a generation, but for all generations, for all time. This constant, perrenial revelation of great art has the power to make us feel, as Rilke did before the marble of Apollo, “I have to change my life”.

Since Maugham’s argument is so weak, his conclusion is anti-climactic: that beauty in art is that which must improve the lot of humanity or uplift the individual to be a better person: "Goodness is the only value that seems in this world of appearances to have any claim to be an end in itself. Virtue is its own reward. I am ashamed to have reached so commonplace a conclusion. With my instinct for effect I should have liked to end my book with startling and paradoxical announcement or with a cynicism that my reader would have recognised with a chuckle as characteristic. It seems I have little more to say than can be read in any chapbook or heard from any pulpit. I have gone a long way round to discover what everyone knew already."

I believe that beauty in art is the perception of intelligible form. When you first look at a painting, say, without knowing the form, or understanding the artist's intention, the work may be unintelligible. Since the aesthetic reaction does not depend on intelligibility, one may find the painting beautiful, or not, according to your subjective, aesthetic response. This is the level of art appreciation that need not know art, but it knows what it likes. We share this capacity with our pets. Without it, we feel nothing, that is what the word, an-aesthetic, without feeling, implies. The corrollory of this etymological fact is that aesthetics concerns dentistry, or surgery, more than art.

This arbitrary, aesthetic response is not relevant to art work, because whether a particular viewer likes it, is no foundation on which any artist should base his work. Equally, whether anyone will buy the work, is not an artistic concern.

Artists who set out to please the crowd, aiming solely to profit by making art for the market, build their notion of beauty on fickle opinion. The market is the general public, who "don't know anything about art, but know what they like". When an artist guesses what the mass of people, at the present time, like, and delivers it, he is not producing either art or beauty, but what people want at that time, which may not be art, may not be beautiful.

If, on the other hand, the artist is concerned with the form of the medium, and understands what has been done in the field up to that time, and sees a way to take that form forward in a new direction, in a way that allows others to understand the form in a new way, then that work is intelligible. It has meaning, in its own form, which other other artists who work in that form can see, and understand.

It may be a revolution that will encourage the exploration of a new direction, that may even change the course of the history of art. This may in turn become fashionable, as a result of top-down filtering; and it may become identifiable with a certain period; but there are in every art depths of formal intelligibility that can transcend time, such as a painting by Rembrandt which continues to inspire painter centuries after his death, because he reveals a truth about the art of representation of the figure by means of light and colour; a truth about the relation between breadth of handling and the engagement of the viewer's visual imagination; a truth about the representation of the individual humanity of the subject, depicted through the universal language of the body and the facial expression alone.

If the truth of the form is there, the work is beautiful to anyone with the slightest capacity for appreciation, it endures because, to stick with the form of painting for an example, from the formulation of the paint and the handling of the brush, to the choice of subject and its composition, nevermind the theory of light, perspective, colour, and the foundation of drawing underneath all, a Rembrandt painting stands outside of time, untouched by fashion, for all ages, even though it may well have offended the fashion of its own time.

In the same way, Van Gogh changed the history of painting in his work, although his paintings were unintelligible to the market of his own day. They were understood later, as the mass of human beings have come around to appreciate Vincent's work, through the work of all the art movements which sprang up after his death, exploring new ways to use colours, new ways to apply paint, new ways to give vitality and expressiveness to the surface of the canvas, indeed, to recognise that it is nothing else than paint on a surface, and that the medium and the artist's imposition of his feelings are as important, or more so, than the exact resemblance of the likeness of the portrait, or the appearance of the landscape. Vincent's form of painting succeeded because it shocked even painters of greater facility than him to attempt to be more true to themselves, more personally expressive, in their painting. And the mass of people eventually began to judge as beautiful, what first they thought was ugly.

I don't condemn art motivated by the desire to make money; that does not guarantee a beautiful work of art, and if that is the only motive, I question if it is art. To be art, I judge, it would have to have an intelligible form, the artist must demonstrate a knowledge of the form: if it is painting, it must be understandable to painters, as demonstrating a command of the form; to be judged competent, it must meet some standard, or demonstrate some familiarity with accepted forms of the art, even if only to breach the accepted rules. But if it commands a high price, or becomes famous, that alone does not mean that it is successful or even good, as art.

That may seem to go without needing to be said. I only make a point of it in order to draw the comparison with the assumption that virtue or goodness is an acceptable definition of art, as Maugham suggests. Just as an artist may do art chiefly or even totally for money, that does not guarantee that the result will be good art, or necessarily beautiful,even if it commands a high price.

In just the same way, an artist may be motivated to further the public good, whether by social comment or service. However good the cause, the result is not guaranteed to be a beautiful work of art, any more than if the motive was selfish money-grubbing. So, just as money-earning ability should not be taken as a measure of an artist, neither should the social benefit of the work.

From where I sit, it is equally irrelevant to the value of the art whether it is judged beautiful or ugly. A great work of art can depict a subject which may very well affront the moral values of the majority of people who attend its first exhibition. The history of art is full of examples of works which were condemned as decadent or degenerate by the society which viewed them at the time. And so the artist must look further for meaning and purpose of art than income or social relevancy. The market place may praise the work that sells, and the community may reward the artist who serves it, but the praises and rewards of society at large are unfortunately accorded by the masses who care nothing for art, and whose praises or condemnations should therefore properly be ignored by the artist on the trail of truth, goodness and beauty in art.

Blog 2009 WEEK 31: 0726-0801: Reading Maugham's 3 Fat Women

2009-08-01T12:23:00.000-07:00

CORACLE VOLUME TWO ISSUE SIX NOW ONLINE AT: http://mypage.direct.ca/a/ameehan/vol02/06/index.html

Read a funny story, The three Fat Woman of Antibes, by Somerset Maugham. It made me think of some women’s lifelong struggle to overcome gluttony. Maugham's own view is expressed through the attitude of the doctor in the story, "She upbraided the doctor but got no sympathy from him. He pointed out to her various plain and simple facts." The fact being that many people are fat because they will not curtail the appetite, but abitually indulge it. It is a problem of the will, a vice, and deserves to be disapproved by the doctor.

Disapproval is justified by those who do not indulge in gluttony, rather than the young, who pig out and burn it off, and condemn their elders who eating no more than their juniors, but metabolise it less efficiently, and exercise less.

Disapproval of the fat is not justified in those fortunates for whom food is only fuel, who claimed not to care particularly what they put in their mouths, they did not care for food as such, they eat to maintain physical strength, for no other reason than that. I pitied those people, if what they claim is true, for taste is one of the senses, and food should be enjoyed as a sensory, if not sensual experience, to develop the palate just as music should be appreciated to develop the ear. Those who do not appreciate the pleasures of the table are puritanical, in the original sense of that word, and have a streak of asceticism that runs deep in European culture, asceticism having been a popular pastime in ancient times.

Most overweight people are hedonists; but that’s not why we are fat. It is not that we cannot say no to food. We can, but we are unwilling to do so. We say we have no will power, but we do: we exercise it every time we will ourselves to eat more than we know we need. we apply our will power to overeating. That is what we are able and willing to do. This is what frustrates the doctor. Essentially, there is nothing a doctor can do, because this is not a disease, the problem is the patient is unwilling to take advice, and persists in choosing to do the self-destructive thing, unwilling to stop it. To lament, “I can’t stop myself!” is hypocritical. We stop ourselves from eating right all the time. That’s why we’re fat!

BLOG 2009 WK 30: 0719-072: Celtic Borders, Reading Maugham

2009-07-25T00:23:00.000-07:00

CORACLE VOLUME TWO ISSUE FIVE NOW ONLINE AT: http://mypage.direct.ca/a/ameehan/vol02/05/index.html

Set up ordering form for my book, Celtic Borders, and uploaded to web page: http://mypage.direct.ca/a/ameehan/t/0011/index.html

I am reading a book of Somerset Maugham's short stories, selected from his complete short stories, which I would very much like to have, as I really enjoy all his stories I have read so far. Either I am developing a taste for short stories, or Maugham is just a very good story teller. By which I suppose I mean that his style of storytelling is the sort I should like to write myself.

His stories are much more immediately satisfying than Joyce's, for example, although Joyce's are more convincing, subtler, less dramatic. Maugham's stories are focused on moving the action forward, and he captures the interest by providing emotional intensity, his characters portray passions, caught in circumstances that push them to emotional extremes, and he describes what they are feeling, so that you identify and sympathise with them. Joyce’s short stories frame a moment in time, produce the effect of impressionist painting in words, a cinematographic snapshot of a moment. Maugham’s grip the reader's sympathies, hold the attention, so that it is hard to put down the book until the story ends.

These may have been written for magazine publication, in the days when people read stories in magazines, and page turning was the commercial rule. Joyce is not a page-turner, but his stories are more realistic; he creates a feeling of authenticity, convinces the reader—especially an Irish reader born in the 7 decades of the last century, that what he is describing is what the reader recalls from his own experience, and is somehow persuaded into believing that the events of the story are drawn from his own memories.

Joyce is the greater artist. His art is more existential, subtler, intellectual, and his effect is deeper, more lasting. Still, I enjoy Maugham's tales, especially thse early ones of the South Sea, that read like Stevenson adventures, but with a more modern sensibility, more disillusionment, less tolerance for religious hypocrisy, a colder, sharper, more penetrating psychological insight, and more awareness of the female point of view.

At the same time, he reports with detachment the prejudices and pretensions of his time; the end of the Victorian era, the turn of the century, the snobbery, the racism, the sexism of his characters does not seem to be satirical, but is presented as how people then thought, and expressed themselves; white people, raised to believe they were superior to all others, to whom the whole world was viewed as their colonial possession. In some ways like Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, in his dissection of the meanness of that mentality. In his short stories, Rain, Honolulu, Maugham charts a course midway between Stevenson's South Seas and Conrad's Africa.

BLOG 2009 WEEK 29: 0712-0718: Fiction: Turgenev; Mann

2009-07-18T00:23:00.000-07:00

CORACLE VOLUME TWO ISSUE FOUR NOW ONLINE AT: http://mypage.direct.ca/a/ameehan/vol02/04/index.html

Read a story by Turgenev, The Hamlet of the Schigri District. I found it interesting, although I do not quite get it, as a story. The narrator goes to a gathering, winds up sharing a room with another character, who declares himself to be an nonentity, and goes on to tell his life story, how he came to be nobody. Then he rolls over and goes to sleep, without telling his name. So there are two narrators, the purpose of the first being to introduce the second, and the nonentity's life story is easily the life story of any middle aged man of middle class background. Written in 1849, it might be considered a foreshadowing of the existential literature of the 20th century.

I reread Thomas Mann's Disorder and Early Sorrow, written in1925, though whether that is the date of the story or the translation, I am not sure. I think it may be the date of the story, if it is autobiographical; andI think it is, as the family in the story sounds like Mann's own, with four children, two adults and two infants, as I believe was his case in the early 20's. It is a complete and tender recreation of his home life. Rereading it is for me like a visit home, back in time, recalling to my mind the atmosphere of my early childhood. My time and circumstances were different. The way he paints the picture is so skillful, that it evoke similar recollections in every reader, even one like me, coming from a subsequent generation.

BLOG 2009 WEEK 28: 0705-0711: Beckett; Death

2009-07-11T12:23:00.000-07:00

CORACLE VOLUME TWO ISSUE THREE

NOW ONLINE AT: http://mypage.direct.ca/a/ameehan/vol01.html

Finished Beckett's Malone Dies. Then read some Luis Borges, which, though on a more professorial plane, yet seemed to me to be written in a similar vein, a similar kind of approach. I wonder if Beckett was influenced by Borges.

I also read a story by Dostoevsky, about a man who was swallowed by a crocodile, a fantastic tale, spun out off the top of his head, and could have gone further, but dropped at the end like a toy from a childs hand who has suddenly had enough of it.

Afterwards, I felt very low. I don't know if this was the result of unaccustomed activity, or reading Beckett's sustained meditation on the vanity of life and the primacy of death. On that note, I read a short story by D. H., Lawrence, about the wife of a dead coal miner, who can hardly bear to look on the dead body of her erstwhile master, but who turns away completely from her ultimate master, her own inevitable death. I thought about death a lot as I lay in bed all day long one day this week: I wonder if lethargy as a foretaste of final decrepitude. It is hard to resist the pull of inertia, the downward pull, that increases with age. It is Thanatos, Greek god of death, the pull of the grave. In early life, vitality, energy, is a gift, taken for granted. In late life, it is a skill to be applied, self-discipline, the responsibility being to work despite feeling low, or tired.

BLOG 2009 WEEK 27: 0628-0704: VAG;FLOURISHING;BECKETT

2009-07-04T00:23:00.000-07:00

NOW ONLINE AT: http://mypage.direct.ca/a/ameehan/vol01.html Went to the Vancouver Art Gallery, saw all the Old Dutch Masters, then upstairs to see the Emily Carrs, which were a refreshing change from 18th- to 20th century art, and these were cunningly integrated into a show of work by Jack Shadbolt, showing the continuity between the two, at least in this early work, up through the late sixties, to the Forests Suite of 1971, a series of large charcoal drawings, on one wall, and on the other side of the room, related images by Carr, in oils on canvas and paper. At the end of the room was a gigantic tapestry of Shadbolt's eventual trademark, the psychedelically abstracted butterfly. I am researching flourishing, the traditional form associated with the quill. I had found a good lot of examples of flourishing back to 1600, but had nothing from there back to Durer, about 1515. Now I have found a collection I had scanned some years ago from a book by Lehner, Alphabets and Ornaments, and bingo! found a lot from 1500-1600, and a few more since then, as well as several good examples from Edward Cocker which I had not seen before. Reading Journal of Italic Handrwiting, 1966-1967, copied out verses of Peter Bales in small hand modelled on that of Ludovicus Regius. I very much enjoy the company of enthusiasts Alfred Fairbanks, A. S. Osley and Trethewy. Fairbanks spending lots of time in the reading room of the Victoria and Albert, digging out 15th c. writings, hunting for prototypes of italic handwriting from fifty years or more before the first copybooks of Vicentino, in 1522. The Regius script is from 1588. I can feel the relation in it to the Irish miniscule cursive, the pointed small letter a, which Trethewy describes as a man carrying a sack on his back, is like the triangular letter belonging to the Irish national hand that I learned in Irish Gaelic class in the 1960's, which was only phased out halfway through my time at secondary school with the adoption of standard Roman alphabet. The early italic small g tantalises my eye with its hereditary resemblence to the Irish g, as does the small t, especially if the t is written like a small i, without a dot, and a cross bar added, with a pointed tick on the left side, like the upward flag serif of its great-grandparent, the Irish-half-uncial minuscule cursive. The Irish cursive became the cursive of Anglos Saxon script, such as Alcuin was taught, and so it haunts the Caroline script, on which the early Renaissance cursive was written. These are my own observations, from the point of view of one who was taught to write the Irish script at an impressionable stage, and would like to write it again, one step removed, in a form that might be recognised today as a small, rapid handwriting of distinction. Read a bit of Beckett, Malone Dies. I find his writing very beautiful, in the simplicity of his style, poetic in a strange way. Perhaps it is the internal monologue that seems like poetry. It is very intimate, like listening to the thoughts of the dying man, the writer, composing his last story, or trying to order his imagination to do so, and his mind wandering willy nilly as it circles around his intention, trying to focus, by the habitual will power of the writer who has trained his imagination to create stories. It is a portrait of a mind reduced to its tottering foundations, illuminated by gleams of wicked humour, and of poetry, as when he remembers his tresspassers, but forgives none of them, but instead condemns them with a slpendidly geriatric curse: “Let me say before I go any further that I forgive nobody. I wish them all an atrocious life and then the fires of hell and in the execrable generations to come an honoured name”. And he has the hero of his story, Saposcat (coined from sapiens and scatology?) recalls the flight of hawks he has seen: “But he loved the flight of the hawk and could distinguish it from all others. He would stand rapt, gazing out at the long pernings, the quivering poise, the wings lifted fo the plumet drop, the wild reascent, fascinated by such extremes of need, of pride, of patience and solitude”.

BLOG 2009 WEEK 26: 0621-0627: Curing Quils

2009-06-27T00:23:00.000-07:00

NOW ONLINE AT : http://mypage.direct.ca/a/ameehan/vol01.html

Did some scanning of recent Ornamental Penwork. Later in the evening, read about curing quills, I thought might be necessary with the recent batch, some of the nibs tending to open after being cut, as if not dry enough.

I might tie up a bundle and leave them outside in the warm weather, see if that will help.

One of the suggestions I read, thought I would try, to cure the quills some more by drying them out completely in the toaster oven. Tried as recommended in one text I read, 10 minutes at 350: the quills began to burn after a minute or so! Tried a second time, much more cautiously. Warmed the oven, turned it off, put the quills in for about ten seconds, and found that was more than enough for some of them. It might take longer for some very fresh quills, I suppose, these of mine have been sitting in the basement for four or five years, not the driest place, but they have clarified already. Since that is part of the curing process, I expect it would take much less time in the oven to dry them out completely, and clarify any that have not already become clear on their own.

I tested one of the freshly cured newly cut quills, and it was satisfactory.

I conclude that it is best to let them cure naturally with age, but if they have not completely dried out, then about 8 seconds in the residual heat of an oven pre-warmed to 350 is enough for large goose quills, and 5-6 seconds for small quills, if any. One more reason to avoid smaller wing feathers, having to separate them out from the rest for shorter exposure to heat, as they will burn sooner than the larger ones. I scanned the quills that came out of the oven. These are not very good quills, some slightly distorted, and the barbs tore off unevenly, leaving a roughness which is not comfortable to handle. Good enough to experiment on for cooking. I think I shall do some more experiments with my less desirable quills.

Began reading some books on calligraphy I had acquired in recent years, and not read. I do not know why, perhaps I thought I knew it all. But now I find these books on techniques, history and specifications of particular scripts, and the work of calligraphers--so varied, and wide ranging-- inspire me, making me feel as if I want to return to formal calligraphy. The work of Jackson and Ingmire, combining lettering and abstract expressionistic painting suddenly attracts me, having completed my first painting of abstract expressionist style, which I loved to do, and never tire of looking at. Words combined with that make for a very strong, contemporary medium.

In the studio, I have a bunch of paintings in progress, almost to final stage. I glazed them with a full-strength coat of gloss glazing medium, to smooth the surface ready for final line painting, where a smooth surface is better for painting fine lines with the brush.

In future, I wish to do away with outlines in my paintings; that is to get away from drawing, especially on top of a painting. I am begining to feel that lines, like black paint, do not belong in painting, as such, but rather to coloured drawings and illustrations, a distinction I have only begun to appreciate.

2009 WEEK 25: 0614-0620 On Selecting Quills for Writing

2009-06-20T00:15:00.000-07:00

I fetched a box of quills from 2004, about 15 various kinds of feathers. I sorted out the less round ones, and put them aside, in case I ever figure out a convenient way to make them round. I might run out of feathers one day, and then I would like to try softening them in hot water, and roll their barrels between my fingers, to restore them. None of this lot are perfectly round, but I selected the ones that at least felt comfortable to turn in between my fingers. Flatter ones do not turn smoothly, they turn a corner from a round shoulder to a flat side, which then no longer turns, and the narrow edge feels too thin for a pen, more like writing with a shish kebab skewer. I find that writing with a pen that is too thin causes the finger tips to ache after a while. Maybe that is why the old books recommend roundness as one of the chief points to keep in mind when picking quills.

As a quill dries out and ages, it goes through a change, like wood in a violin, that hardens and tightens with age. It becomes clearer, as compared to the milky-white tinge of barrels of feathers which have been newly plucked. Some of the feathers in this batch have not clarified after four years, and I throw those out, along with any damaged, including several pierced by pellets when the geese were shot as well as some smaller feathers which I no longer even bother to pluck, as they are no use.

If they haven't clarified after four years, while other, healthier, better quills from the same batch have cured perfectly naturally, I see no point in trying to force then to clarify by sticking them under hot ashes, or baking them somehow. If they are substandard to begin with, there may be other problems apart from moisture retention, so that even if all the moisture is driven out, the pen may still suffer from chronic gander's teeth, caused by a coating of membrane that is too thick, and which no amount of scraping can strip; or a slit that gapes overnight, because the tip sucks more moisture out of the air than the shank of the barrel. Artificial curing is a last resort if you have only a few quills; if you have a stock of hundreds of quills curing naturally over several years, selecting only from those that have been drying for more than two years, there is no call to fuss with the obviously uncurable few, as far as I can see.

I used to think that a smaller quill would be useful for writing smaller writing, but that was wrong. The larger pen takes a fine point better than the small pen, because the point is made and shaving and paring and bevelling and snipping a cliff edge on the tip, which is easier to manage with a larger feather, because there is more material to work with, and, having removed all cuttings, there is still enough remaining to stand wear and tear. It seems to me now that a smaller pen has less to work with, and since a large feather requires maximum magnification in order to see what needs to be done with the knife, a quill half as large is twice as hard to see, and so is twice as difficult to prepare, takes twice as long to make, and wears out twice as fast, if it works at all. It is just not worth the trouble.

2009 WEEK 24: 0607-0613: Musings About the Muse

2009-06-13T00:15:00.000-07:00

Woke up and wrote a tune. While I was recording my impression that the muse (whatever is responsible for generating tunes in the brain), is not a separate entity, I "inadvertently" erased the words I had just written. It was as if the muse objected to my trying to deny its independence.

I don't want to hurt the muse's feelings. Maybe I need to rethink the relationship with that source of my music. Maybe I need to think of it as a separate entity, with a life and a mind of its own, like a person who needs to be recognised, in their own right. But I want to avoid thinking about it in clichés, such as with religious or mythological associations.

I certainly recognise the muse and thank it and praise it. It needs to be acknowledged, like a person in that way. If not, it may clam up, peevishly, like a child. But I do not believe it is a separate entity, only a different part of my mind, most often unconscious, occasionally erupting into my everyday thought.

It seems to be semi-autonomous, yet part of myself. Perhaps the same may be said of the every-day, waking part of the consciousness, that part of the mind which is said to be only the tip of an iceberg, the greater part of which is submerged. But I’d like to get to know better the part that produces music. I experience the activity of the muse in a definite way, as a collaborator in the creation of music.

Inspiration has been symbolized by a little bird that sits on the end of the lyre, and sings to the psalmist, in medieval art. The bird then was interpreted as the Spirit, or agency of revelation as well as inspiration. This emblem seems to refer to inspiration as a virtually separate entity.

Revelation and inspiration are closely connected—both pop into the mind fully-fledged, or unmediated. This was a subject of intense interest to the English Romantic posts, such as Shelly. To him, as to Blake, inspiration and the notion of the spirit are closely linked, as the main concern of the poet, or artist, who channel visions from that hidden source, and therefore create images that subsequently guide the population at large, so that poets are, in the view of these poets, the unacknowledged legislators of mankind. Put quite that way, it may sound absurd and pretentious. But that was the view of the role of the artist in society during the Romantic period, from the later 18th century, at leas: the artist was thought to tap a deeper level of creativity and vision, to produce works from a deeper level of the mind than the kind of thing used to express personal opinion or view point - which everyone can do as well as the artist.

If the Romantics’ definition of the function of art in society as a cultural impulse is true in it, artists today should still give the proposition some thought, if only to accept or reject it.

If the inspired artist does create art that can profoundly affect the history of human thought—and who familiar with the history of 19th-century thinking can deny that the Romantics themselves demonstrated this (their concept of social equality, for instance, so much a part of modern idea of democracy)—as did their successors, the Modernists, who invented the sensibility of modernity—artists above all others need to understand, and work with the source of inspiration itself.

I believe that the source of inspiration is the imagination. The artist needs to align with that source of inspiration, and work from that centre, in making works of art. If addressing the muse verbally helps to encourage an underdeveloped muse, or source of creative inspiration within us, then I do not think any artist need have any qualms about talking to the muse, asking for its help, thanking it for its gifts.

Perhaps this kind of reliance on creative inspiration is the first stage in all poetical production, as of musical creation. And that is why I am interested to find the equivalent approach to the making of images, or of paintings. What is the equivalent in art work to this kind of unmediated creativity that in music takes the form of a "stream of unconscious" continual background of musical melody playing in the back of the mind of a trained musician?

I am tempted to answer, dream imagery, for these are images that rise unbidden. But I mean what are the images that rise, unbidden, in the mind when we are awake? We tend to suppress those, what ever they are, because it would be hallucinatory to see something that was not there.

Maybe, even, everything we see "out there" might be viewed as an unbidden image, after all, assembled in the mind from sensory data, and nothing more than that. Because we are unaware if the process of perception, most of the time, we do not think of it in that way. But what we see is unique to our own point of view, and everything we see all the waking day is, after all, a vision which only we can perceive, and maybe whatever we see can be viewed as inspiration to a visual artist—that is, as a continual flow comparable to snatches of melody that continually pop into the mind of a musical composer. It would seem, then, that engaging with the muse is a matter of opening the conscious mind to the unconscious, and opening the unconscious mind to access by the conscious mind.

BLOG 2008 WEEK 23: 0531-0606 Bird Flourishes

2009-06-06T19:59:00.000-07:00

I started a series of flourished birds based on a design by George Bickham, in his book, “The Young Clerks Assistant”, or Penmanship Made Easy. A useful copy is available from Dover Books. Not as famous as his masterwork, The Universal Penman, which is a collection of engraved samples contributed by the best penman in England at the time, in the 1730s, but the little manual may have had a greater influence, as setting the standard for the style of cursive handwriting that became known as English Roundhand (that's the common-or-garden variety of the elegant, large Roundhand Text, which came to be known as copperplate writing).

This is a freehand copy of a bird from George Bickham's 1733 Clerk's Assistant p.8, converted to a continuous line, with one penlift. Bickham's model has several unnecessary penlifts, and I was inspired to reconstruct it to see if I could improve it any.

I sensed there was a design that Bickham had in mind, but failed to achieve, and published his deviation from the model anyway. I drafted my reconstruction of this hypothetical model a few times before I arrived at the first design in this series, but it still has too much of an 18th-century feel about it, too many tight loops for my taste. In my analysis, the construction begins with the underside of the lower wing, and completes the upper wing, then the pen is lifted. I have left this open, where you can see the gap.

The second stroke starts from the beginning again, around the upper edge of the lower wing, and from there all around the bird. In this example, the end of this second stroke stops short of the end of the first, but could with a little practice be brought to close that gap, creating a continuous line figure.

The next drawing shows the same construction, but the end of the second stroke joins the end of the first stroke, and makes the line continuous. There is a penlift, but you can only find that out by repeating the design yourself. There are two levels of appeal to a design like this. One is to the general viewer, this is an aesthetic appeal, and has purely entertainment value. The other is to the artist in this field, to present a puzzle, which has to be solved through reconstructing the design. An expert can read the design on both levels.

The third level, which goes without saying, is the educational value which this kind of design has for the student ot the pen, in this case, the goose quill, which is the most traditional kind of pen, and to whcih this kind of flourish belongs, for it predates the invention of the mechanical substitute for the quill, that is, the mass-produced metal nib in a straight penholder. In the days when children were taught to write with a quill, such exercises were given to them to practice in order to amuse them, but also, in the process, teaching them how to hold a pen properly, and how to handle it, and how to charge it with ink, in order to draw a long line without a penlift. For when these things are mastered, one can write with freedom, paying attention to the writing,having got the pen into good working condition through the preliminary flourishing exercise. As well at this, they were learning to draw with confidence.

Over the next while, I returned to this design and took it further, trying out different approaches, gradually making it my own creation. I do not believe another artists production should be copied unless for illustration purposes, to see how it was done, for instance.

I believe that as an artist I should take up any model that appeals to me, and do it freehand, sketching it in different ways until if becomes uniquely my own, like a signature. Otherwise I find the result retains the style of the artist whose particular work first inspired me.

Repeating a design with variations, freehand is one way to develop a personal style, different from anyone else. These birds belong to the tradition of bird flourishes, but, by the end of a few week's work, I have made them my own. This approach may apply to other types of traditional design as well.

2009 WEEK 22 0524-0530 Indenture Handwriting

2009-05-30T11:05:00.000-07:00

Scanning this indenture from 1826, I notice the hand is a good practical roundhand, written with a quill. It seems to me to have may points in common with the educational aims of Carstairs, who published his work on rapid handwriting 3 years later, but who may well have been aware of trends in professional scrivening such as that seen in this indenture from Yorkshire.

I have one minor quibble: this writer’s small letter n looks like a u. Despite this bad habit—which makes the word “thousand” look more like “thonsaud” and “county” like “couuty”—this is the kind of easy writing movement taught in schools a hundred years later, following techniques of rapid writing such as the Palmer Method (my mother and her schoolmates, like millions of others of their generation, learned a very similar hand, in the 1940s).

Turning to a second indenture from the same place in Yorkshire, now dated 1849, I see a change has come about following the introduction of the steel pen, which came into general use after 1830. This interesting development anticipates Spencerian handwriting in several ways. The main difference is that in the earlier writing, the form of the script bears witness to its ancestry, as descended from the Italian chancery cursive hand, in which the cut of the pen determines which strokes may be thin and which may be thick. In the roundhand of the earlier indenture, the thicks and thins generally seem to have followed from the cut of the pen.

After the introduction of the pointed steel pen, in the indenture of 1849, we see some strokes are thick and some are thin, but this is up to the writer which is to be which. It is no longer a formal necessity, but an arbitrary, aesthetic judgement, or matter of personal taste.

This new style of writing, seems to have lasted for a couple of generations, before coming under fire from both the standards of the craft, which sees no excuse for thick and thin strokes that bear no relation to traditional quill-formed letters, and on the other flank, towards the end of the century, the commercial scriveners began to demand complete abandonment of superfluous “shading”, as these arbitrarily-made heavier strokes were called.

In the example of writing from 1849, the effect of the steel pen can clearly be seen. Some strokes are pressed to make them heavy, so that these stokes are not produced as a result of the cut of the quill, but instead are determined by the whim of the writer.

2009 WEEK 21: 0517-0523 Wrought Iron Dragon

2009-05-23T11:05:00.000-07:00

This is a photo of a detail from the wrought iron gate based on a design I made from a fragment of a dragon carved on a wooden beam from a Scandinavian Stave Church, as those wooden churches are called which have survived from the middle ages. What you see is a close up of the head of the Urnes-style dragon, pointing up, with a whisker curling off the upper jaw. The image of the dragon was carved on an original beam from the roof of a church in Koerning. The design I did was intended to be carved in wood by a carver who has family roots in Koerning, but the carving could not be done, after all. I am glad that the design found an application, after all; this ironwright did a fine job. The body of the dragon is a long strap of iron, woven into the knot I designed. I have never seen ironwork woven in a knot like this before.

2009 WEEK 20: 0510-0516 CELTIC PAINTING, 12 BIRDS

2009-05-10T10:01:00.000-07:00

(Continued from week 12, March 21st 2009) Stage 3: The first stage was the drafting of the design, the second was the red background; the third stage shown here is red and blue tails, covered by transparent yellow.

Stage 4: The next deepens the shadows, to get more contrast, by painting the transparent ultramarine blue of the tails over the of the background. This makes the red tails stand out. Stage 4 completed here, wings edged with red, and a clear coat of acrylic over the whole thing.

Stage 5, cadmium orange over the red tails, indigo violet bars on the wings, and as shading over the blues and greens.

2009 WEEK 19: 0503-0509 CELTIC PAINTING SOLAR LION MASK STAGE 3 STAGE 4

2009-05-09T08:17:00.000-07:00

Fig. 19 A1

This painting started 8 weeks ago with a pen and ink drawing, lightly filled with a pale yellow wash. That was sealed with a clear coat of gloss acrylic and turned face to the wall to set. Picking it up at the second stage, it was filled in with light yellow ochre around the face to make the face stand out.

Fig. 19 A2

Over this earth tone a thin coat of cadmium yellow and orange was applied aross the hairline, and a transparent coat of terracotta was applied around the cheeks, to deepen the shade there.

Fig. 19 A3

Ultramarine was added to make the background much darker, and over the red around the face, eyes and mouth where it makes a deep warm shadow of rust glowing under deep blue. The big bushy eyebrows were given a touch of violet, and thin orange was added to the form lines around the face to make it stronger. The curly beard now got two or three more layers of orange and Naples yellow, which looks like clay.

Fig. 19 A4

Finally, the face, beard and frame is gone over with a warmer yellow; the continuous line around the mouth, nose and brows is filled Naples yellow.

2009 WEEK 18: 0426-0502: CELTIC PAINTING 4 BIRDS STAGE 2

2009-05-02T08:17:00.000-07:00

Fig. 17 A1

We left ths painting 8 weeks ago as 4 white birds on a brick red canvas. Now, the birds bodies have been painted yellow with breaks in the strokes for the birds tails and topknots to weave over and under. The background was gven a second coat to increase its contrast behind the birds and make a border round the edge.

Fig. 17 A2

After this, the border and a bar on the wings were painted violet, and the bodies and necks were painted red and yellow, in an alternating pattern: where the the outside birds have red necks and yellow vests, the pair in the middle have red vests and yellow necks.

Fig. 18 A3

That red on those two middle birds bellies was a mistake! As you see, the red on the birds bodies disappears against the red background, but that is easily fixed: I painted them blue mixed with titanium white, which makes the blue opaque, so that it covers the red with no show through. Then I painted half of the tail feathers the same blue, so that some of the tails are pink and some are blue, and brush a line of blue over the violet border. Once dry, this stage of the painting was given a clear gloss coat to seal it.

2009 WEEK 17: 0419-0425 CELTIC PAINTING 2 BIRDS STAGE 2

2009-04-25T08:17:00.000-07:00

Fig. 17 A1

The previous stage of this painting saw it drawn in transparent acrylic paints, first in red, then yellow added to tail, body and neck, then yellow washed overall, leaving it with yellow birds outlined in white on an orange background. The canvas was left to dry, then varnished with a clear gloss acrylic medium. Now the background and part of the wings are overpainted with cool dark ultramarine.

Fig. 17 B1

Next, Hansa yellow goes on the beaks, crosses the wing and covers the background in patches, turing the thin knots yellow and the background neutral olive against dark blue.

Fig. 17 C1

Lastly, a touch of violet to set off the olive green, and a warm blue wash over the tail feathers and the wings. Now that the painting is ready to go on to the next stage, it gets another sealing coat of clear gloss acrylic medium.

2009 WEEK 16: 0412-0418: CELTIC PAINTING, 4 DOGS: STAGE 2

2009-04-18T08:17:00.000-07:00

2009 WEEK 16: 0412-0418

Fig. 16 A1

I call this stage two, but it is actually a few stages rolled into one, spread over a few days. But I am counting stages as whatever goes on between one barrier of clear medium and the next. In this first picture, the reflection is from the first coat of clear re0rkable varnish, that acts as a barrier to protect the under painting, so that if I want to undo what follows, I can take it back down to this barrier, without having to start all over again. The barrier is a safety net, It also prevents the paint that goes on top of it from sinking back into the underpainting, making it look drier in some patches than others. Not only that, but where the next layer of paint is transparent, the clear coat lets the light through, like a window, all the way down to the white gesso ground of the canvas, The gesso catches the light from above, and reflects it out through the layers of paint, allowing the light to mix optically, creating colours that were not mixed in the pigment, but which ate perceived by the ye as emanating from within the surface of the painting, which makes the original painting seem to glow, or radiate. I like this effect.

Fig. 16 B1

In the previous stage, I drew the pattern roughly with a red pencil, then painted the background with a wash of transparent red iron-oxide pigment. This is a colour which was commonly used in the middle ages, and it very commonly used all over the world, because it is easily found in nature, The pigment is found in clay, giving it that brick red, or terra cotta colour. It is found in the earth in a lump, called Armenian Bole, and is water soluble. It is a versatile pigment, I was surprised to find this transparent variety. Here I apply a light, cool yellow, that is another type of earth pigment found in clays, called light yellow ochre, It has the same buttery quality that I is pleasant to use.

Fig. 16 C1

Continuing, I paint this warm blue all over the background including the narrow knots. It makes the background very dark, but the shadows have depth, which a flat black would lack. Depending in the density of pigment in the red and the blue, the shadows will appear warmer or cooler, and therefore seem to be closer in one part than another, this is what I mean by depth. It is as if the foreground floats on a vapour, through which you can see further in some places than others, like fog at night. The blue knots stand out in front of the dark background, but do not seem to be as near to the surface as the bodies of the dogs, because we tend to see white, and its equivalent, pale yellow, as nearer, and the rest further away. Blue is a cool colour, and yellow is a warm colour, usually, But here is a warm blue in contrast to a cool yellow. This creates a tension between the colours, as we perceive them, The blue seems closer than expected, the yellow seems further away from the eye. And this may add to the visual impact of a piece.

Fig. 16 D1

The next step is to bring up the yellow, and here the cool yellow is covered with a transparent glaze of cadmium yellow, which has more zing to it. The wash covers the whole background, turning the narrow knots green, as you can still see if you look closely. But this pushed the knots too close to the background, as the yellow over the blue and red made pats of the background appear green too. To make the knots stand out, I need a colour contrast, and so the knots are gone over with a light blue, cooler than before, with green shadows giving them a 3-d, wiry effect.

At this point, the piece is ready for another clear coat, and then the next stage, stage 3, will go on from here.

2009 WEEK 15: 0405-0411: CELTIC PAINTING, 2 DOGS

2009-04-11T08:15:00.000-07:00

2009 WEEK 15: 0405-0411

CELTIC PAINTING, 2 DOGS: STAGE 2, BLUE GLAZE

Here goes stage 2: a transparent blue glaze over the yellow and red underpainting. The blue turns an earthy dark neutral tone over the red background, and blue green over the yellow. Where I reserved a stripe of yellow at the edge, and ran the brush around the outside, where the canvas was covered only by the white gesso primer, there you can see the blue wash on its own, a thin ultra marine. The medium is clear matte acrylic, thinned with an equal amount of water, mixed in a bulk stock before hand, since most of the colours I am using are glazes, and are more medium than pigment, at least in these early stages.

I previously painted a yellow wash over the animals, except for the narrow ear- and tail extensions, and the faces. Forming the secondary knots, which break up the background areas. The knots, of course, should be continuous, from beginning to end, with no loose strands. The only loose ends should be traceable back to a head or a rump. To keep track of the weaving, as well as to add a colour to the animals,. I painted a violet under paint to the bodies, stopping and starting the stroke according to the weaving of the narrow ribbons over the broad yellow part of the animals' bodies.

I worked on something else while the canvas dried, and the colours had sunk into the canvas, before I could tell how they were going to look. Then it seemed to me that I needed to warm the whole thing up, and to increase the contrast between the foreground and the background, and heighten the opposition between the violet and the yellow, making the violet more violet, the yellow more yellow. I had started out with a wash of Hansa yellow, which is cool and lemony, but now I replaced this with wash of cadmium yellow, which is a strong warm buttercup.

The yellow wash brought up the blue-green border, making it warmer. It was easier to apply the wash over everything except the very outside edge, and the violet bodies. Then I painted out the cheeks and feet and body edges with solid white, to sharpen everything.

When this was done, I painted the legs blue, and put blue over the background, to throw it further back. I put a green stripe around the inside and over the rest of the border, reserving the narrow yellow stripe. This done, the whole thing was given a coat of transparent gloss medium, which has caught the reflection of the light in this picture, making it appear frosted all over, although it really is not. I like the image, though. And the effect could be replicated, perhaps, with metallic powder mixed into the paint. Or a rough sandy texture underneath, would give a similar effect.

BLOG 2009 WEEK 14: 0329-0404 CELTIC PAINTING: 5 SPIRALS IN A SQUARE

2009-04-04T08:14:00.000-07:00

The idea from for this painting came from a design I made for the frontispiece of my colouring book, The Lindisfarne Painting Book. It is a square with five spirals, which I copied from detail in a reproduction of a page out of the Lindisfarne Gospels.

In each corner are three spirals, wound around each other to form a triple spiral. Each triple spiral is hooked up to another, similar spiral in an adjacent corner. The third path of each corner spiral converges into the large, fourfold spiral, divides into two pairs of paths, and ends in a hook and a comma. From each hook a single spiral emerges, crosses through the middle, and ends in a single coil. The single coil winds into a stylized bird-headed terminal.

I have never been completely satisfied with this arrangement, because the single spirals seem too like loose ends to me, and I view this as a weakness whenever it occurs in Celtic spiral design. I often wondered how the middle part of the design might be rearranged so that it would be better integrated, with the ends of the four spirals all interconnected somehow. So that is how this painting started out.

I also wanted to see how the drawing would look painted larger, as it was first published as a design in the painting book, to be coloured in. I had designed the cover in a computer painting program, which gave the colour scheme from the Lindisfarne Gospels. But computer graphics look flat and dead to my jaded eye now. I want to see it come alive with colour from a brush, a product of a human hand and eye—in other words, a work of art, rather than a mechanical illustration.

What you see here is the preliminary underpainting on the canvas, more or less the same design, drawn freehand with a red pencil, by eye straight from the book onto the canvas, except for the middle part of the design which I changed slightly.

Inside the largest, central spiral, I made the hook and comma terminals into triple spirals, and ran a single spiral out from each to hook onto a path going through the middle, which now joins up with its mate on the opposite side, so that the whole design is continuous, insofar as it leaves no ends hanging loose.

I painted the background red, so that the pathways stand out in contrast. This is the simplest way to colour in the designs in the painting book.

If this were jewelry design, the red areas would be excavated out of a gold panel, and filled with red enamel.

2009 WEEK 13: 0322—0328: CELTIC PAINTING, DANCING BULL NO. 1

2009-03-28T08:07:00.000-07:00

This is a copy of one of the four variations of the dancing bull design which I began working on towards the end of 2008 Week in 38, posted September 14th.

You can find that and other previous entries by clicking on Aidan’s Weekly archives at the top of the sidebar to the right. (That sequence ends the week of January 18, 2009).

This Dancing Bull is meant to stand upright, as a stained glass window, in a doorframe. It works two ways: horizontally, (as here, where the bull charges, with hind foot raised) and in a vertical stance (poised on the outstretched hind leg) kicking up its other rear leg, hence Dancing Bull. Of the four variations, which I have posted in previous blogs as pen and ink drawings, this is number 01.

The Dancing Bull panel was inspired by a story my best friend told me, how he was attacked by a wild bull and barely escaped with broken ribs. At the last moment, he pushed the horns off him with the kind of strength only adrenaline provides bull tusslers, then raised his hands above his head, and bellowed with outrage at the bull. I guess the bull saw the upraised arms as a bigger rack of horns than his, and backed off.

I like the image of the bull, not just because my friend’s story caught my fancy, but because the bull is an archetypal motif in Irish mythology, yet it does not appear as a proper animal pattern in Celtic art, only as a standalone image I wanted to apply the bull as an animal, and at the same time to treat it in a way that does not emphasize its negative side, such as stuck in my mind after hearing my friend tell this story.

Perhaps it stuck with me because I have dreamed of a bull since my childhood in the country where I was warned never enter a field with a bull in it. Though I myself was never threatened by any, my dreams showed me that I grew up thinking the bulls were dangerous animals, to be feared and avoided. So in hoping to exorcise the ghost of the killer bull in my friend’s mind, I may have been coming to terms with that idea in my own mind.

This may be true of flesh and blood bulls, but the bull in my dreams represents some part of me, an “inner bull”, and painting it should be a way of working with the idea of the bull in a constructive way. For me this means showing the bull as non-threatening while celebrating its vitality.

As for my friend, I hoped that the painting heal some of the mental trauma which fighting the real bull left behind. That kind of trauma scars mind as well as body. I hoped that by having image of the bull able to dance instead of only charging, I hope to soften the image of the bull, which the memory of it inspires in someone who has taken the bull by the horns as literally as he has.

Not only did I want to use the bull as a new sort of Celtic animal pattern, I wanted to balance the animal’s fierceness with a happier outlook. Turned upright, dancing, the image looks less threatening.

I worked out the drawing of this bull through a series of about 12 preliminary stages, drawing it several times over from one stage to the next, on a progression that I recorded on previous pages, between September 14, 2008 and January 18, 2009.

http://aidansweekly.blogspot.com/2009_01_18_archive.html

I pinned a drawing of the bull on the wall in my studio behind the easel, and squared it off into a 5 x 2 grid, the proportion of the design.

My canvas being more than twice the size of the drawing, this was an exercise in enlarging an image freehand, so I centered the rectangle of the image on the canvas, and roughly sketched in the grid two squares on the shorter axis, and three along the longer, then eyeballed it as accurately as I could.

This really is an accurate-enough method of enlarging an image, and a good thing about it is, it only needs to be drawn once. The other way to do it would have been to draw it on a sheet of paper, then cover the back of the paper with red Conte chalk, or sanguine, and trace the image a second time over, pressing through the paper onto the canvas, and transfer the image in a red tracing by this method. Then I would need to draw over the chalk line, with a fine pointed brush charged with a thin wash of terracotta, or pen and ink, to fix and define the chalk line, which would have meant drawing it a third time.

By drawing it by the grid method, in the way that painters have done—or had their apprentices do—since the renaissance times, at least, I found I had only to draw it once, and use the eraser on the pencil line to make adjustments. This way is efficient, if you are able to draw, whereas the chalk transfer method, though more accurate, takes longer, and all the repetition is really boring.

If you can’t draw, you could use a projector, or a pantograph, but those give your work a mechanical appearance, which might as well be a sign pasted on saying, “I am sorry, but I just can’t draw”.

By working direct, the artist’s energy level stays high, the payoff of job satisfaction is immediate, and the result is more expressive, and more honest. Yes, you have to trust your hand and eye, and this takes confidence, but only by doing this can the confidence be gained, and when it turns out right, you get a rush of pure joy.

By enlarging the drawing to half of the final size, I found it was large enough to see more truly how it would turn out once the lines were translated into lead, in a glass window. And so I applied a yellow wash, to define the lead line, and get an idea of the balance between the thickness of the line, and the cells of the background areas. At 50%, instead than 25%, it is easier to tell whether a narrow strip will be possible to cut out of glass without putting the glass cutter to unnecessary trouble, having watched him work, as it is easier to visualize the end result at twice the size, than four times. I could measure it with calipers all the way through, but I don’t feel that are necessary. This is not the pattern for cutting, this is a painting, and so if it is close enough, I am happy. Still, some refinements to the drawing may be made at this point, with glass cutting in mind.

I filled it in yellow because that pale color can more easily be altered, if needs be, than a thick black line at this very early stage in the under painting which is the time to makes any adjustments, rather than later on. I want to get the design nailed down tight before committing to a black lead line. The line is so crucial to making a leaded-glass window; it is best left last, and then lay it down over the painting, when all the colors have been painted.

After tinting the lines for the lead came, I painted the background in transparent iron oxide red, to make the shape of the bull stand out. The red shapes correspond to pieces of ruby red cathedral glass held between the tracks of lead when the design eventually gets fabricated.

For a better idea how the image might look as a window, I painted the surrounding canvas black, as if it were a wall, painted with a broad brush, with a raised texture, like plaster, I thought. When that dried, I glazed it over it with transparent ultramarine, causing it to recede further, while heightening the red background.

LINKS TO THIS POST:

The beginning of a series of blogs recording the development of this design from September 14, 2008, as part of the Dancing Bull Panel

http://aidansweekly.blogspot.com/2008_09_14_archive.html.

The Dancing Bull Panel painting wrapped up on January 18, 2009:

http://aidansweekly.blogspot.com/2009_01_18_archive.html

2009 WEEK 12: 0315-0321: CELTIC PAINTING, 12 BIRDS, STAGE 1

2009-03-21T08:01:00.000-07:00

CELTIC PAINTING, 12 BIRDS, STAGE 1 How to design a Celtic Bird Pattern, continued.

This is the third painting in the series of birds that I have been working on for the past few weeks, if you remember, beginning with 2 bird in Week 09; then the two birds repeated to make 4 birds in Week 10.

The idea is to show how to design a Celtic bird pattern. starting with a single bird, with the neck and tail and top-knot arranged in such a way that the single motif may be mirrored on itself and woven continuously, so that part of the pattern that bounce off the edge in the single unit allow the corresponding parts to continue from one unit to another, in the cross-over.

Another way to think of this is that the single unit is a folded down version of the repeated unit, and the kink of the neck or the tail where it meets the boundary of the single unit has to be intentionally designed beforehand, in order to allow the motif to be unfolded. The bounding edge of the single motif then must be considered as a potential axis of symmetry for unfolding.

If the pattern is not symmetrical in the single unit, this means that it can be extended horizontally, either to the right or to the left, and it will form a new pattern. Or it can be reflected upwards, or downwards, and a new pattern can appear. The designer starts with a single unit, and builds in bends in the path of the knot, whether of neck, or tail or crest, then repeats the design in one or more axes, and modifies the design where necessary. Where a modification is found to be necessary, it may be recorded, and applied to the single motif, so that the folded down unit may be gradually improved.

In the process of developing the motif, it is necessary to make a number of different designs. The motif might be extended vertically, in a border strip. Or it might be extended horizontally, in a strip. The strip needs to be three units wide, so that one end of the strip shows the treatment of one side of the closed unit, and the other end of the strip shows how to close off the other end. The single unit contains the information for both ends. What it does not show, is how the ends may be woven together in repeat, although with experience, you can learn to visualize this in you imagination.

If you see three birds in a repeating border, you can imagine the ends remaining the same, and the middle unit repeating indefinitely. The artist need only present three birds as a minimal statement of a pattern that an educated viewer, one who understands Celtic design, I mean, can elaborate imaginatively. In this way, there is a kind of audience participation implied in the interaction between the artist and the viewer.

Take two birds, with necks crossed over. The single bird has a bent neck, and its back rests along one edge of the box containing it. When two birds are placed back to back, you can see that the bent necks of two birds may be joined, so that they cross over.

I showed that in my first painting in this series, which was a painting of 2 birds.

Along the edge opposite the one at the birds back, the tail can touch in the single unit. Again, here is kink in the path of the knotted tail. Two birds only shop the crossover along the edge between the birds backs, but the design needs to work on the opposite side, too, and that is why I made the second panel in the series, namely of 4 birds. This arrangement allows you to see how the tails may be crossed over. And the four birds may be taken as a minimal statement of a repeating border, extending in either direction to the left or the right. It is not necessary to show this, it is implied. The four bird unit shows how to close the pattern at either end, and it also shows crossovers on both sides in the repeating unit in between.

Now the next stage is to show how to extend the pattern vertically, along the top, with the crest from the birds heads crossing over, head-to-head; and the pattern needs to be extended below, feet-to-feet. In the first instance, the crests from the birds heads form a knot, which really cannot be imagined beforehand, as there are two many possible variables, and a great number of possible knots to choose among. So in the early development of the motif, the designer chooses one solution, preferably a simple one, which leaves the viewer to imagine other possibilities. A Celtic artist looking at a design like this should feel inspired to alter the design, to play with it, and apply it in some other, original way.

The head-to-head fold has two crossovers, the knot between the necks, and another between the beaks. Both allow for further development, but here they are shown in simple terms, to give some idea of how this pattern might look when unfolded from four to eight birds.

That would be a good design, except that it is not complete: because this motif allows the tail to bend along the edge behind the birds foot, and when four birds are repeated with their feet coming together in a corner, these tails are able to cross over, and will form another knot pattern.

There is another possible development, where the top-knots from the birds heads end between the feet of each opposed pair. These may be crossed over or not.

So, taking all of this on board from the get go, you can see that this this design of twelve birds is the minimum unfoldment of the motif required to allow the viewer to see all the possibilities for overall repetition, along each of the four edges of the original motif. It is not completely symmetrical, because the aim is to satisfy the mind, not the sense of aesthetics, which is a matter of taste. The design is good, by the standard of intelligibility, as it provides all the information required to develop a whole system of ornament based on this single motif.

An aesthetic criticism might be made that the design, as it stands, lacks a visual centre: fair enough. But all the information is the image already, enough to produce a number of symmetric variations on the same pattern. It asks you to imagine your own solution, if you require a centre to balance the whole pattern.

To make the twelve-bird unit more symmetrical, a row could be added and the design would become 16 birds. There are two possibilities for this arrangement, however, as you can see at a glance. The top row could be added upside down to the bottom edge of the panel, or vice versa. The information is all there to enable you to imagine either possibility.

But to give the pattern breathing room, it needs to be expanded four times the size, to 48 birds, that would produce an effect of the crossover knots forming a repeating pattern of their own. To do that would make the canvas four times as big.

In the middle ages, when this art was being developed, the support for the designs was an animal skin folded into pages of a certain size. So the patterns could not be fully developed by going to a larger size.

The patterns were fully realised only by reducing their scale, and this is why Celtic illuminations are so miniaturized, as if to fill every available space: because the pattern demands to be expanded, to reveal its full potential; and since the upper size is fixed by the size of the animal skin, expanding the pattern can only be done by making it smaller.

Most of the ornaments in the books are reduced to the most economic compressed form. But on carpet pages, and in the backgrounds to some major initials in the text, the patterns are repeated as overall patterns.

We are not so restricted as they were in those days, and we live in a culture that can accommodate large-scale canvases, or murals. Therefore, more than ever before, these kinds of patterns can be unfolded and revealed to full effect.

I imagine this single unit could be made into a stained glass window. But that is not what I had in mind for this pattern. I did these series of birds to show why it is that the form of the bird in the single design needs to fulfil certain structural requirements, if it is to work as a Celtic art motif that will be of use to other Celtic artists in future.

This may sound odd to a modern mind, but the artists of the manuscripts were working with future applications in mind. The ongoing Celtic art revivals of the past few centuries are thanks to that forward-looking approach to design, which makes this kind of ornament useful both today and far beyond tomorrow, if it is done well.

This art need not look slick; it only needs to be intelligible to viewers who understand and appreciate Celtic art, as I hope this painting will be.

As it stands, this design is the bird motif adapted to a particular canvas, which makes it a different proportion from the others which were done previously. This proves an inportant point, for an artist of one-off paintings: it has not been mechanically transferred; and therefore it has to have been drawn by eye, directly, which only a human hand and eye can do.

I feel that is is very important that Celtic art should become independent of mechanical illustration techniques graphic art technology. Computer technology of today will be obsolete tomorrow; and, due to this, a style of art that is dependent on that technology will evaporate. Besides that, all you learn, as an artist, from technological dependency, is that you need to keep upgrading the technology, because you cannot work without those proprietary tools.

Painting on canvas with brush and paint, or on paper with pen and ink, develops skills that, over a lifetime, keep improving; besides, works produced by hand are understandable to viewers equipped with eyes and hands, but not necessarily with high-end graphics technology.

The art benefits from being made by the most direct means, by which the artist's skill grows through the making of the art, and the viewer can appreciate the work, far into the future, because hand-made, human work is always immediately understandable as such. The human touch is proof against obsolete technology, and intelligibility of form is perennially satisfying, and attractive. That's why I think this is the most worthwhile approach to take to Celtic art, in the long run. At least, that is what I was thinking when I started this particular painting.

2009 WEEK 11: 0308-0314: CELTIC PAINTING, SOLAR LION MASK

2009-03-14T07:31:00.000-07:00

CELTIC PAINTING: SOL FELIX

This is an image which I have had in mind for along time, it almost feels like an old friend. It is copied off the top of a pillar in an old building in Galway, Ireland. I drew the first draft a few weeks back with a hard red pencil, and now gave it a wash of hansa yellow paint before sealing with a clear coat of arcylic. You might remember seeing this face before. I reproduced it more exactly in my book Celtic Design: The Dragon and the Griffin, the Viking Impact, to illustrate the way in which the Irish artists adapted elements of Scandinavian style into their brand of late- medieval Celtic art. The drawing as reproduced in the book is designed was first drawing pen and ink, and then scanned as a digital bitmap image. Then I touched it up in a bitmap-editing program, and converted it into a vector curve image, to get rid of the jagged edges that show up when enlarged. Resizing a graphic image to fit, it sometimes needs to be made bigger. For this the vector curve rendering on the computer is particularly suited. Unfortunately, as I was new to the process back in 1995, editing the image slightly distorted the lines, so that the drawing has too sharp an appearance, like that of a wood cut, compared to the original. But since this was for an illustration of the Tuam mask, and did not need to be an exact reproduction of my drawing, it was okay. I drew the design on the canvas from memory, and now that I look again at that illustration in my book, I see that the spirals below the head have become integrated into the face, and become part of the mane. In this painting, I felt free to alter the image of the lion’s head, integrating not only the spirals on either side with those below, but also joining them with an outline between the eye and the brow, running into the cheek, which I outlined and joined it to the eye; then I outlined the nose, and joined it to the mouth, which I also outlined. Outlining, of course, is a trademark of the 2-D art of Celtic animal designs on painted pages, so here I am translating the 3-D mask into a form more at home on the flat surface of the canvas. I felt inspired to add three freckles on the cheek, for not particular reason, I thought. But I now see on the photo from the book by Francoise Henry, described as a detail from a chancel arch from Tuam, that there were three indentations on the stone, which I guess I registered unconsciously, and this prompted me to put in the spots on the cheeks. It is funny how the imagination alters memory. Having edited this image twice over with the kind of intense attention to detail which computer graphics demand, you’d think the image would have been so seared in my brain that I,d remember it exactly, even after 15 years. But the face of the lion has softened; grown more cheerful than the rather sinister expression it acquired in the book it had acquired, which I chalk up to line distortion caused by over-reliance on the vector-line editing program. Later, I learned to edit vector curves by hand, labout intensive, but a more faithful way to do render a vector-curve tracing of a pen-and-ik drawing. I was new to vector graphic editing at that time, this was the first book I had designed with my own custom designed fonts, based on the calligraphic bookhand and Celtic half-uncial I had developed in the previous six books of the Celtic Design Series. The technique of tracing a bitmap into a vector line drawing is one I learned when editing the type faces, and here I applied it to the graphic design as well. I was to do a lot more artwork using these computer techniques, but finally I became convinced that they are not suitable mediums for an artist, at least, they do not satisfy me. I see them as graphic arts tools suited for commercial design, for reproduction, more or less evolved from the cutting and pasteup of the old school of layout for publications, which is where I learned my trade in the mod ‘70s. Then drafting had to be done with German-engineered mechanical pens, with hypodermic-needle ppoints, which designed to produce lines of standard widths, and drafting was done with geometrical instruments. There is a lot of labour involved int htat kind of graphic design, and the artwork is one step removed from the final image. Often, the original artwork was done large, and assembled from one or more cut out pieces, stuck down with hot wax, and painted over all around the edges with thick opaque white paint. Or, if not wax, gum was used, and the gum was a removable adhesive which over time burned the paper, so that originals I have from those days are often marred by brown stains from the gum, and, where the paper had yellowed, by glaring aubs of white-out. This is not artwork, in my view. It is not satisfying to the artist, nor is it intended to be, as it is noly intended to be satisfactory to the customer, or the publisher, as the case may be. So, after decades of this work, I am breaking out into paint and canvas, and taking my line drawing to a new level, as works of art, for my own satisfaction. I have left the computer behind, and I use it now purely for mechanical processing, such as in scanning the images for this blog. As for books, posters, calendars, and all the other usual outlets for professoinal graphic artists, I believe those are unprofitable for the artist, in the long run. They force the art into the requirements of the publisher, or other client, and in the end, unless you aspire to be a commercial illustrator, the demands of commercial illustration can take up all your working life, until, int eh end, uyou have nothing to show but commercial illustration. If you aspire to be more than a graphic artist, which these days has been largely sidelined by a combination of computer graphic reproduction and the recycling of copyright-free clip art, so that a graphic artist hard needs to develop drawing skills to succeed int hat field, then I believe you are better of concentrating on one-off works of art. Not only do they provide you with more satisfaction, but they lead you along further in your own direction, so that your art work evolves more rapidly than if you are stuck in a mechanical reproduction process, dependent on the direction or judgement of others. Not only is one-off art more satisfying, but in my experience, you can earn more from the sale of paintings and original (meaning one-off) works, and to produce such works is the greatest investment an an artist can make, not only because orignal work sells, but because it improves the artist, where commercial work profits others, at the expense of art. Incidentally, you might be interested to compare my drawings above with the source of the image, taken from Françoise Henry’s book, Irish Art in the Romanesque Period (1020-1170 AD), published by Methuen in 1970, the third in her Irish Art series, which I personally treasure next to her edition of The Book of Kells as an indispensible book in the reference library of any Celtic artist. The original photo is credited to Belzeaux-Zodiaque.

2009 WEEK 10_0301_0307

2009-03-07T07:29:00.000-08:00

CELTIC PAINTING: FOUR BIRDS, FIRST STAGES

This painting is an experiment to find a technique for painting Celtic art that uses brush and paint more directly than the more usual method of first drawing lines, and then colouring them in.

That was the method was used in the earliest days of miniature paintings on vellum, or what used to be called “stained drawings”. It is a method suited to the art of book decoration, which was mostly pen and ink drawing, with colour added.

I am curious to find out other ways of doing Celtic design with paint and brush on canvas, in the more modern way of painting, on a larger scale. The subject of this painting could fit in the space of a fingerprint in a manuscript. I want to do it on a relatively small canvas, (16x24in / 48x60cm) , byt that;s still 1000 times bigger, which cries out for a free style.

The art of painting is a much different form than of drawing. Largish painting requires a different technique than pen and ink drawing.

In drawing, the outline is made first, and the shape is filled in from edge to edge. You might say the image is drawn from the outside in, since the shape is first defined by the outside line. In painting, the opposite is generally true; paint is applied to the canvas and the brush spreads it outwards to define the shape, from the inside out, so to speak.

In practice, there is a certain amount of overlap, but I tend to draw the outline first, and then paint it in after. I may start with a very light pencil sketch, add the paint, and go over it at the end with a black line, as was the method used by illustrators of early books. The problem then is to keep within the lines, which tends to cramp the style. In this painting, I aim to get as far away from a cramped style as I can.

Tight drawing communicates lack of confidence, or fear of spontaneity, to draft a thing completely in advance, down to the last detail. In some works, this may not matter, if the work is not intended to be an expression of the artists personality. But since the eighteenth century, at least, painting has explored the possibilities of personal expression in a freer form of painting, and I have been thinking a lot about this of late.

Painters of the early 19th century called it breadth; that is a certain looseness, that leaves more to the imagination, and accomplishes its effect with economic means. I feel that bradth is a good thing, it makes a painting more accessible, as it reveals the person of the painter in a more human way, through the visible handling of the brushwork, honest display of handiwork, rather than looking somehow machine made. So I am looking for a technique that is less painstakingly technical, that is more appropriate to paint brush on canvas than pencil and pen.

In this painting, rather than start with a white canvas, draw the design, then fill in all the little background spaces, like so many islands of red paint floating on a sea of white, I first painted the ground completely by staining with rusty red the gesso with which the canvas was primed.

Next, using as a model the painting I did last week of 2 birds of similar design, I freely transferred by eye and hand only the pair of birds onto each half of this wider canvas, adjusting the proportion to fit, spontaneously.

I drew without outline. I placed a brush stroke approximately where I wanted the bird to be, and then dragged the paint out from that first patch of wet paint, until I had the contour established more or less where it should go. If not exact, that does not matter.

And so the contour of all four birds bodies, legs, feet and tails, heads and necks, were built up. Then the path of the knot from the back of each birds heads was copies freehand, by looking at the model, and then drawing the curves into place with a smaller brush.

Then I placed patches of yellow on the beaks, wings and shanks of the legs, and with a thinner yellow, lightly coloured in the weaving, as a guide for later stages of the painting yet to come; next, I coated this underpainting with a clear layer of acrylic medium, which I intend to work on top of with transparent colours, to build up a rich depth of varying tints and shades.

At this stage, I have not decided the colour scheme, I will let that come about as the painting go along. So far I am working with two colours, red and yellow, only. These are enough to allow me to define the background and foreground in the underpainting.

Last, I finished off this first stage by giving it a clear coat of reworkable acrylic meduim, and set it aside to dry thoroughly before taking it to the next level.

BLOG 2009 WEEK 09: 0222-0228

2009-02-28T07:17:00.000-08:00

CELTIC PAINTING: TWO BIRDS, FIRST STAGES

The first stage of this small painting is a freehand sketch with a red pencil, based on a drawing I did of a bird motif that might be expanded into a repeating pattern. The tail bounces off the side of the canvas, so that if this pair of birds were repeated, the tails would cross over from one unit to another at those points. This is how I develop a Celtic design for a repeating pattern.

I looked at the sketch on one side, and drew onto the canvas directly without tracing, by eye alone. This feels a lot freer than tracing and transferring a detailed cartoon, as I usually do.

The original drawing was a different porportion, but I adapted it to the canvas, which happens to be 9” x 12”. The original was shorter, and by stretching the bird, I got a lot of empty space at the bottom, which left the legs looking spindley, so I tied the tails in a pretzel, to provide a solid base for the lower half . After the rough draft, I blocked in the background without weaving the line of the knots. Then I laid on a pale yellow wash, and gave it a barrier coating of clear medium.

The second step was to lay a yellow wash over the tail and body of the birds, and the background, reserving a contour at all the edges of the main figures. Notice how this yellow foreground brings out the weaving of the design. It also lets me check the weave overall before getting into heavier painting; if I discover a mistake in the weave at this early stage, it can be reversed with less trouble now than later. Because there is a barrier of clear glaze between this and the underpaint, if I paint yellow where it shouldn't go, it can be wiped off with a damp cloth immediately, with out leaving any trace.

BLOG_2009_WEEK08_0215-21

2009-02-21T07:11:00.000-08:00

BEGINNING CELTIC ART PAINTING FOUR DOGS

This is the preliminary stage of the painting, roughly sketched freehand, by eye. These 4 dogs are a development from the 2 dogs from last weeks blog. The four triangles are different, these are arranged around two diagonals joining opposite corners, where the previous design was arranged on one diagonal. Also here the dogs are facing out, where last week they faced in. These variations are easy. As well, there are a couple of differences here that are more challenging. First difference, I decided to drop one of the forelegs of the dog from last week, it had two front legs and one hind legs, so this seems to work better, I already have enough feet to deal with in this arrangement with having four toes two jaws and a tongue to knot in each corner. By amputating that leg, there is more room for the ear and the tail to do their thing in the extra space opened up along each side of the square. The second difference is the hind leg. Instead of turning it all the way around and out to the corner, where it would again end up in a tangle of toes, I ran them into the middle, and filled the central area. It is not symmetrical, because it was not planed out with that in mind, the drawing was made spontaneously onto the canvas, and I don’t really care if does not look geometrically precise, because if I wanted it to be precise, I would have used geometrical instruments. I want to see what I can do without any mechanical aids. I believe the result is more lively, because of the irregularities caused by the lack of mechanical drawing. If it is an imperfection, I don’t mind . It is an honest expression of how I was at the moment when I did it. It is like a plant, which grows from a seed. Let the seed be the idea in my mind, the image in my imagination. When I project it onto the canvas, other influences come into play, apart from my mental and physical state, there is the angle at which I am holding the canvas, the angle at which I am looking at it, which my cause a slight distortion. There are changes made to the plan as I go along, which introduce deviations from the original intent. And so, a seed may be perfect to begin with, but if planted at the same time as a number of other seeds, all as perfectly alike as peas in a pod, yet the plants will grow more or less, straight or crooked, strong or weak, according to the rain and shine, earth and water that they get. Each will be unique, nothing in nature grows exactly according to a predetermined plan, but gets reshaped by accident, and that is how variations occur in nature, and new forms emerge unexpectedly. There is an old principle here, that goes something like “art is the imitation of the way that nature works”. A work of art should allow accidents to happen, the artist should adapt to what comes out of the process, it is what makes this kind of work so pleasurable. To me, this is like playing jazz. I want to get into a groove with the design, so that the result looked well designed, and yet, it has been allowed to get bent out of shape here and there. It has character, and it looks and feels like a living thing, as a result. So am going to let this design go ahead, and let it become what it shall become, however it happens to turns out. I have brought a lot of organization to the canvas, and from here on I can let it unfold with a minimum of interference from me. My hand and eye are part of the materials I have brought together, I am interested to see how it looks when it is finished, for that will tell me where I was at the time I did the painting, like a snapshot.

BLOG 2009 WEEK 07_0208-0214

2009-02-14T07:11:00.000-08:00

STARTING CELTIC ART PAINTING OF TWO DOGS These started from a small drawing I did a long time ago, as a design for a repeating unit shaped to fit a triangle. I had intended it to be repeated in a border, with the triangles alternately pointing up and down, extending in a row. I thought it would be good to do it up large as a canvas, as I think it has possibilities, and rather than just sketch them and throw away each variation, I decided to work out my idea directly, and paint it up. Then when it is done, I can chose a possibility to follow out of it, and start another painting. This seems to me to be a good way to keep my interest from flagging, and also to keep painting, instead of getting bogged down in endless drafting. Doing it direct saves paper. First I drew the dogs freehand with a red pencil, I found a good hard red pencil that is also erasable, and water soluble, so it can blend into the underpainting. Then I drafted it with a quill and ink, to see how that might work. The quill worked well enough on the canvas, so now I know. But the ink was not waterproof, and it greyed the yellow coat that I put on over it later. However, the yellow glaze has sealed the black line, so it will not affect the next coat I put on top. The third stage was to paint the background red, and it is all ready for a layer of clear medium to act as a barrier to protect the work already done, so if I make any mistakes, or change my mind when I apply colours later, I can wipe them off down to the barrier layer, and do it over, without damage to drawing underneath.

2008 WEEK 06: 0201-0207

2009-02-07T06:30:00.000-08:00

SOISCEL MOLAISE PAINTING, FINISHED After the canvas had dried thoroughly where I had been painting it while stretched out and pinned to the kitchen wall (the canvas, that is), I thought it was now stable enough to carry on without fear of it swelling, as the canvas is not going to stretch any further under the few light coats of glaze and touches of small brushes still to be done, so it was taken off the wall and tacked onto a fibreboard support mounted on an easel. A medium naples yellow glaze was applied to all inset panels to bring out the gold and the weave was corrected on the animal pattern, second from the bottom on the right hand side. The gems were painted red, the centre gem green; then it was all given another clear glaze. But I was wrong to think it was stable. The canvas still swelled under the glaze, started to bag and fall off the support, which is strong enough to hold paper pinned to it, but not heavy canvas pulling tacks out as it buckles. I pinned it back on the wall, stretched it and refixed tacks as needed to keep it flat until dry. More pale yellow mixed with white was added to highlight the gold panels. The lettering was outlined with purple shading to make it look engraved; edges of the panels were outlined the same way, to sharpen them up; and transparent gray glaze was applied over the silvery grill, to make it more uniform in tone. Feel as much as could be done had been, and that any more work would be be over-worked, is a good sign that this painting is finished. A coat of finishing medium was applied. The topcoat set glossy, showing brush marks. Colours darken and appear more transparent, like glass enamel. I trimmed edges, sign it and pack it ready to ship to its new home, a private collection in Ireland.

2008 WEEK 05: 0125-0131

2009-01-31T06:29:00.000-08:00

CUMDACH SOISCEL MOLAISE

Work in Progress

I started this painting towards the end of last year, working at it on and off while painting the Dancing Bulls, which I finished in last week's bog.

I left the Cumdach at the layout stage, having taken a long time to work out the geometry of the bookcover design, which is a Celtic cross in a frame surrounded by the four evangelist symbols, the man, the lion, the bull, the eagle, for Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, respectively.

I am painting this flat, not stretched on wooden bars, as it will be shipped by post to Ireland. It should eventually be mounted flat, under a mat, and framed like a water colour.

As canvas relaxes when wet, and can dry cockled if not kept flat while being painted, I thumb-tacked it to the wall while the glaze dried, moving the tacks to keep it stretched while I applied the glaze.

Acrylic glazing medium is slower to dry than the regular gloss medium, which allows it to be worked into for up to half an hour after laying it on, so this is a time to touch up the glaze.

I glazed over the red underpainting of the grill with a semi-translucent mix of zinc white and a deep sky blue. After a few days, the blue glaze paled as it sank in, and turned silvery violet. I then glazed a transparent untramarine blue over the light red, which turned it a dark coffee; and applied darks for the shadowed areas, so that the gems began to pop; then scumbled in darker shadings around the hexagonally split tops of the rivets scattered strategically around the grill. I want to capture the three-dimensional quality of the metalwork of the book shrine.

2009 WEEK 04: 0118-0124

2009-01-24T06:27:00.000-08:00

BULL PANEL PAINTING PROCEEDS TO FINISH

Painting proceeds on theoverall pattern of repeating units, each containing four bulls, each one different in design, woven together face to face, horn to horn, back to back, tail to tail. Where a particular bull repeats, its colour scheme has to be is repeated. I worked systematicaly through teh whole patern, doing one variation of the four bulls at a time, as each has a different colour arrangement.

For Bull 1, I mixed a darker grey for the background, and outlined the bull staying away from the red line.

I mixed a lighter shade of the violet whcih when glazed over the darker ground, gives the illusion of volume. A paler pink goes over the red; a paler yellow goes over the darker yellow. a tint of Naples yellow over yellow ochre. Then pale green and blue was applied, the pale blue harmonizing with the violet. After that the whole background was darkened, and tails and legs were outlined with the dark, warm, neutral, semi-transparent tone. Almost finished now. The entire border background was darkened in a final glaze. Spirals centres were picked out with dark crescents, and the eyes, ears, and nostrils were defined with touches of warm translucent charcoal. The four inner squares in the step pattern were made a deeper orange and outlined, as were also the inner blue-and-green crosslet around each square stud in each quarter of the step pattern. Crosslets formed by L-shaped corners of adjacent tiles were outlined. Other red lines were left inside the step pattern, to distinguish the secondary midline dividing the original 14 square into a 28 square. The step pattern coincides with the Mucking Belt Mount pattern, which is the earliest example of step pattern that I have found so far from Romano-British times. That belt mount (and its decoration) belonged to German mercenaries settled in present-day Wales, predating Anglo Saxon settlement. I think of it as designed by a German from Scandinavia, who served as an officer in the Legion until pensioned to a villa in Britain. He was very likely a Christian, at least nominally, as Roman army officers were, at that time, Constantine having decreed Christianity to the the state religion of the empire, this being one source of Celtic design (if not Celtic Christianity), often overlooked, as Celtic art combines many influences, including Scandinavian and Roman, from the earliest centuries of the Christian era.

Finally, I might point out that the panel is ambiguous as to which way it should be hung. Turn the painting on its side, the bulls are head-butting and kicking each other. Turn the painting long-side-up, and the bulls are dancing face to face and kicking up their heels. This is how I intended it to be at every stage of the painting, and so I have entitled the work, Dancing Bulls.

It may seem odd that bulls should be made to sand upright, but these are not meant to represent actual animals, but ornamental motifs; there is a precedent for animals standing up like this in heraldry, as supporting a shield or a coat of arms. I don’t want to evoke that heraldic tradition, however, and so I prefer to think of them as dancing, all forty-four of them, around the square dancefloor, decorated with a step pattern.

I finished the painting in time for New Year 2009, but it has taken me some time to write it up, organise the pictures, record the process over the past six months. I don’t intend to record every painting I do in so much detail. I wrote this one up because it is important to me, personally, and also I thought it might be helpful to write out a descrption of the process, as this is the most important piece I have done since the painting of “Devenish”, which I did between 1986-1989.

This one involved more preparation, because the components were also required to work as designs for windows. But the concept is comparable, Devenish was another exercise in geometrical construction, improvised into a sampler of ornament; this painting is related as exploring proportion and the geometry, but of the repeating pattern itself. “Devenish” was about geometric layout, while this design deals more particularly with proportion and numbers. In both designs, the final piece “ just growed” out of the surface being decorated, according to the principles of medieval craft, in which geometry and proportion play an essential role. Since last September, then, I have been recording the process by which number and proportion occupied the planning part of my mind, so that the non-verbal part could take over behind its back, which cannot be expressed other than in the act of painting. Writing these thoughts down along with pictures of work in progress tells a kind of story which I hope will help to give a better idea of what this particular painting is all about, what to look for in it, and hopefully these notes will help the viewer get more out of the act of viewing, which is just as important as the act of painting, otherwise the painting is not completely finished. It is after all a form of expression, or communication, and like any art form, it needs some kind of introduction in order for the communication to be appreciated by others.

2009 WEEK 03: 0111—0117

2009-01-17T06:27:00.000-08:00

DANCING BULLS CONTINUED STAGE 3

In this stage, a two colours go on top of the thin underpainting of iron-oxide red pigment over a separating barrier of clear varnish. The same two colours, blue and green were painted into the step pattern.

The varnish allows any mistakes to be removed while the paint is still wet, without disturbing the under painting. And as the colours are transparent, the light can pass through the layers of paint separated by transparent glaze, and reflect out from the white canvas from below the colours, making them appear to glow. I am convinced that this was the technique used by the painters in the Book of Kells; although they used egg albumin as a medium rather than acrylic, these two media have many characteristics in common.

The step pattern is divided into four 7-inch squares. The overall measurement of the square area dropped out of the middle of the animal pattern is 15 inches (as you can see, there are five bulls on one side, two bulls on the other, and each bull measuring 3 on the side with five bulls and and 7.5 on the side with two).

That is, the pattern in the middle derives from the grid of the bull pattern, which is based on a sqare grid 1.5 inches: the short side of the rectangle containing the bull is 3 (1.5 x 2). The long side, 7.5 (1.5 x 5); the 15-inch square in the middle is divide by 2 bulls on one side, and 5 on the other.

A reserved band of empty space 1/2 inch wide surrounding the step pattern separates it from the animal pattern. This white frame reduces the 15-inch square to 14 inches, which divides naturally into 7. This is why I chose a step pattern quartered into 7 inch squares.

Several Celtic patterns could fit such a grid, such as a knot, a maze a spiral pattern or step pattern. I passed over the knot and spiral options, because the bulls are woven and also contain spirals: I want a contrast, so I chose a step pattern which I had been working on last spring, when I started planning this painting, and it stuck in the back of my mind from the beginning. The step pattern connects all the corners on the 7 x 7 square grid by means of an L-shape in one corner, and a single suare unit in the middle, which I left with the underlayer of red paint showing though; between these elements, a zigzag diamond shape connects the remaining points in each quadrant.

All that remains is to colour it in. I begin with blue and green, because I want the middle panel to recede, so that the attention will be drawn to the bull pattern in the border. I want to emphasize pattern itself as the subject of this painting, not use pattern as a border round a picture, because then it would become secondary, be seen as a frame only, instead of being the main subject of the painting. The central square is part of the overall pattern, it is an integral part of the surrounding overall design, born of the proportions of the overall repeating unit, which allow a square to emerge without disturbing the pattern: that is what this painting is about, the division of unity, producing two different things, a rectangle and a square, yet one is defined by the other, so the unity of the whole is maintained. For this reason, the construction of the pattern in the middle is based on the very same grid as the overall design. And since we tend to make the middle more important than the sourrounding background border, out of habit, I made the middle area recede, by giving it cool colours, and a peaceful, abstract design, so that the eye may be drawn away from the centre by the brighter, more dynamic pattern of dancing bulls. In this way, I hope to achieve a balance between the two, the middle area, which is the visual focus, but which is treated with less emphasis, and the outer area, which tends to be overlooked, which is given a livelier treatment, and rewards a close inspection.

The colour scheme started with red under all, and so my first layer on top of that is green, which is the complimentary colour to red, and blue, its opposite. These colours are applied to the tails of the bulls, as well as teh step pattern, so that even though the bull pattern will stand out from the step pattern, it will also harmonise with it, with the common underpainting further uniting the two parts of the painting, the interior and the outer. By reserving a band of white around the step design, I have a third colour to work into the step pattern– white, blue and green. If the L-bracket were filled in with green, the diamond white, and the crosslet blue, the pattern would be filled completely, but that would be dead boring. Then I remembered a 28-square step pattern I had considered at the beginning of the project. A pattern of 14 inches on each side can be divided into 28 half inches. This would still fit with the 1.5 inch grid overall pattern, because all the dimensions involved, 3, 7.5, and 1.5, can be arranged on a half-inch grid. As I had already made the step pattern based on 7, I only had to draw midline through the zigzag pathway through the stap pattern, like the stripe dividing the lanes of a highway; I ran a concentric square around the red square in the middle, and a zigzag inside the L-shaped corner, which dividing those elements; and a couple of lines connecting the concentric square to the arms of the crosslet containing it made to the first pattern transform from a 14-square to a 28-square pattern. The result is now complex enough to alternate three colours so that the white parts make an overall pattern of their own, harmonizing with the white band bordering the step pattern. And the blue and green zigzags make a secondary pattern in the background. The information by which the design may be grasped is all visible. There is food enough for thought in this design. Yet, despite its complexity, it can be seen entirely at a glance, in keeping with an inportant characteristic of Celtic design, the combination of art with science, of aesthetic form and geometric proportion.

The whole painting appeals to the brain as well as to the eye, as a brain teaser. And because it takes a while to figure out that the square is part of the overall pattern, pointing up the proportion of the repeating pattern, and having done so, rectangles may be found of different proportions which may be similarly divided to allow a border to be integrated with the shape of the space contained by a similarly constructed frame. This ia a new approace to Celtic border design, which allows it to be integrated with an overall pattern in a way that has not been done before, and which may lead to a new line of development, as these are key elements in Celtic art.

Instead of running a border all around the four sides, and joining the corners, as in a picture frame, an overall pattern can be created which allows a space to be opened up inside it, transforming the overall patern into a borser pattern, without without violating the integrity of the overall repating pattern.

This is a new concept, in Celtic design, I believe, but one which I believe the artists of the tradition a thousand or two thousand years ago, would have appreciated. As well, the motif of a bull has not been used as an overall pattern in Celtic animal pattern before; and the step pattern is an original design, also. All the parts of this design work together, all equally in harmony with the traditions of Celtic art, and yet the design has, I feel, a modern look. Having chosen the three colours, red, blue and green, I next applied these to the bulls' bodies, in the hollow triangles behind the spirals on their hips, shoulders and flanks, alternating the arrangement from one bull to another in a diagonal symmetry, within each group of four bulls, so that the colour arrangements corresponds with the symmetry of the repeating pattern of the bulls, and the knotwork of their tails, pained blue and green, and alternating in diagonal symmetry as well. This closer view of the midsection shows the detail of the step pattern. I improvised the design based on step pattern chip-carved on a bronze belt mount from Mucking, England, dated to around 400, which coincidentally fitted into the 14 x 14 space. A similar pattern appears as the centre piece of a carpet-like pattern in the Book of Lindisfarne, painted about 1200 years ago. This pattern set out to explores the possibility of filling the middle of a similar carpet pattern with a design which chimes proportionally, yet contrasts with its surrounding border, and I feel that this particular step-pattern has managed to do that very well.

2009 WEEK 02: 0104-0110, Dancing Bulls Panel

2009-01-10T06:22:00.000-08:00

DANCING BULLS PANEL

Work continued on the panel of Dancing Bulls. I already worked out the bull design in a series of about a dozen preliminary drafts of each of 4 variations, traced and transferred to drawing paper, then pencilled and inked up master drawing of each variation. These drawings are a proposed design for a large leaded glass window design of which a pair are be selected for fabrication.

From a Celtic design standpoint, the four variations are equally valid. I shall be interested to see which one will be considered the most appropriate for glass cutting.

Meantime, I designed the four variations together as a repeating unit to fill the canvas in four and a half repeats on the shorter side, and three on the long side.

Although the bull is primarily a window design, I also designed it to fit a 3 x 5 proportioned pattern which may be flow around a square in a continuous border. If you have been following the blog over the past few months, you have some idea of how this design has been worked out with this aim in mind.

These 3 images are of the preliminary painting, drawn freehand onto the canvas using a pencil of the same red as the first layer of paint, blocked out with the brush in a thin wash of rust red. This is practically the same procedure we find in the Book of Lindisfarne, but working larger, and relying more on eye. Having worked out the line drawings in fine detail, on a larger scale, many times over, in advance, I do not need to draft it in any more detail than a rough pencil sketch. Thanks to several months preliminary drawing, I am able to draw each of the four bull variations by eye, to fit them into the canvas divided into 6 x 8 rectangles.

The central square is 15 inches, with a ½-inch grid. Inside this, the step pattern covers a 14-inch square.

The step pattern also gives teh viewer a way of measuring the proportions of the patterns on either side, since the ½ square grid extends to the edge of the step pattern; you can tell from looking at it that each bull is six 1/2-inch steps of the step pattern across by fifteen long, or 3 x 7.5 inches. From that you can work out the whole pattern of 27 x 45 inches; and you can see that the square in the middle fit in the whole pattern without disturbing the continuity of the pattern. That means that this design is intentionally intelligible, in the way that a message on a space capsule is designed to be intelligible. If examined by some alien intelligence, or someone from a culture not familiar with Celtic art, say as far in the future as we are removed from the culture that produced the Celtic art if the middle ages, the design might still be appreciated.

When we look at the Celtic art in old Irish manuscripts, we are almost as foreign to those artists' way of thinking as any extraterrestrial examining the space capsule. But the art of the old patterns is just as intelligible in itself, I have found, and I see intelligibility as a definite part of the tradition. Without that intelligibility, my design would be other than Celtic art. I drew on the canvas freely with a large water-colour brush of a 1/4-inch ferrule, with a 1/2-inch belly when fully charged, yet the point can trailing a single hairline for a long distance. A small brush is not needed for drawing fine lines, only a pointed brush, and a largeer brush is more efficient. The paint I used for this preliminary layout was iron-oxide red, which comes in a range of hues from yellow through rusty earth tones all the way to black. I use a thinned wash of transparent "india red" as this pigment is commonly called. It looks like wet terracotta in the jar or tube. Undiluted, it reminds me of Armenian Bole, which is a form of the same pigment; or that “oxblood” window painters used to applying under gold leaf. The paint turns into a pale warm pink when thinned with water. By the way, this particular pink also reminds me of Picasso’s “pink” period, when he did a lot of large preliminary drawings on canvas, such as life-size figures of clowns and circus riders. It has always seemed to me that he was working out ideas in the red-oxide underpainting, which, if successful, could be put aside for further development. If not, they could be overpainted with gesso, and recycled. I suspect Picasso stockpiled a lot of canvases which he could not afford to buy enough paints to do them all at once in full colour, but he would do one at a time, sell it and buy more paint with which to finish another, being careful to waste neither paint or canvas. Meanwhile, if someone came by to buy a painting, and saw some of these pink creations, and happened to like it, not recognising that it was only a preliminary underpainting, might well offer a sum Picassos could not but accept.

That’s how these pink studies came to be classified as his “Pink Period” by art historians.

I suppose the next layer in building up a painting is to rough in the shadows, with a background colour, grey or blue, then add highlights. And then it is ready to move on to the finish.

This could explain the “Blue Period” that succeeded his pink period. After that, he was making enough money, he could afford to finish all his paintings at once, and we have no more periods of pink or blue underpainted rough drafts.

Not that those painting are any the less for having been signed off and slod at a preliminary stage of production. I could have happily signed this painting at the pink stage, as the whole concept is already there, perhaps even more clearly expressed, for being unfinished. But in this case, I am motivated to work out the colour scheme with stained glass in mind, so I will carry it on to the next stage.

2009 WEEK 01: 090101—090103

2009-01-01T06:21:00.000-08:00

ORNAMENTAL CALLIGRAPHY

This is a design I made recently for a wedding invitation with a Marie Antoinette theme. They wanted something with the words "Let's Eat Cake!".

Blog 2008 WEEK 52: 1221—1227

2008-12-27T05:16:00.000-08:00

DANCING BULLS TAKE THEIR PARTNERS Dancing Bull Variations 1 and 2, draft 8, not yet woven together.

Dancing Bull Variations 3 and 4, drafts 6 and 9, respectively.

I took the knife sharpening stone from the kitchen to touch up the edge on my pen knife, and cut a quill, then started to draw a bull design with it. Having grown used to writing with the quill, I find it a convenient and pleasant to use for drawing.

A couple of days later I finished drawing four related variations of the bulls, which together make a panel which I can weave together into a single Celtic knotwork panel. This will then be the repeating unit for the overall pattern I have been working on for the past month or two, on and off.

I photographed the bulls and printed them out in multiples, trimmed to the required size with a pair of scissors, and lays them out on the floor to see how a painting would look. I have a couple of options, and can’t decide between them, one being as good as the other, but find it helps to lay out the pattern and looking at it, I can see which I prefer. That way I can move the pieces around, and try them out this way and that, to see what works best.

At this stage, the choice comes down to what appeals to my eye, and what best sets off the design features that I want to emphasize, all depending on whether the bulls are placed back to back, nose to nose, shoulder and hip spirals in two different directions – Interesting voids appear in each arrangement, suggesting stars, eggs, even toothy space alien faces, in the overall pattern.

Another reason for laying them out on the floor was to get a feeling for what would look better, whether the spirals on the animals should all turn in the same direction, or whether they should alternate in opposite directions. I tried both, and decided that they should all turn in opposite directions. I did four variations, so that I would have this option.

I wanted to design an overall pattern that could contain a square, using these proportions. And I found that the arrangement I had planned at five feet wide was not only too big, with the bulls at 3 inches wide, and 12 units across, leaving room for a square window to be dropped out of the middle, measuring 30 inches wide, made by removing ten columns by two rows of bulls. However, this left a narrow margin of single bulls framing the square on either side, making a border three inches wide on either side and 15 inches deep on the top and the bottom.

This felt too extreme a contrast between the width of the borders on the sides and above and below the square . It was not wrong, technically it achieved what I was aiming for, but I had another option, I could make a smaller unit, half the size, 1.5 x 7.5, in a rectangle measuring 33 x 45, out of which I could remove 5 bulls across, 2 rows deep, to open a window (pun not intended) in the overall panel of 15 inches square.

This is a better looking proportion. Incidentally, it corresponds to the plan of the page layout I had in mind, that inspired the idea of a continuous border with a square dropped out, namely the animal page in the Book of Durrow. And it allows a margin of two bulls on either side, which looks better balanced than the other plan.

I was able to sort this out in a shorter time by moving things around physically on the floor than if I had tried to use the computer to do it. It would have taken longer, and it is hard to judge what something looks like when so reduced on the omnitor screen. The physical laying out allows me to see how it will look at full scale, and to judge accordingly.

When I finished the layout, I saw that one pair of bulls had a slightly different tail knot than the other, an improved design, so I went back to the drawing board to redo the final draft of the other two bulls.

I thought about how much time it takes me to work up a master plan such as this bull pattern. A complete draft of the bull design involves drawing on tracing vellum, transferring to paper, pencilling the paper version, then inking up. Each stage takes me approximately two hours. Each draft therefore takes a full day’s work. I have completed between 5 and 7 drafts of each of the four bulls, evolving the pattern over a period of three months. Sometimes a draft takes a couple of days to complete, mistakes happen, and sometimes things need to be done over, so I reckon there is six weeks work involved in working up this kind of pattern, just the designing stage, working full days.

It may sound extravagantly laborious, but it is pleasant work, and I do not know any way to get the results I want without doing the 40 or 50 revisions that it seems to take to crystallize a final draft.

However, the interim development is not wasted, as I have been making the drafts on good paper, pen and ink drawings, some of which I will use to try out colour combinations in preparation for painting, and these studies are little paintings in them selves.

The final bull design will be suitable for making in to a window, or any other application I may want to do in future. At the moment, I am applying it to an overall pattern as a painting, because Barrie and I plan to make an exhibit of the window designs when we finish the series.

The paintings are intended to show how the pattern that has been applied ot the glass window, can also be used as a Celtic overall pattern, which is a characteristic of classic Celtic animal design. But it is not practical to make a repeating pattern out of glass: there is a physical limit to the size, apart from the economics of the thing. The paintings can show how the same design could look, in an overall pattern, on a smaller scale.

It is a different medium, of course. Since we are collaborating on the window series, the paintings and working drawings can provide my contribution to the eventual exhibition, to which Barrie W. Sullivan will contribute the finished window designs on which we have been working together for over 15 years.

For me, this bull design is a new development, because although it fulfills all the requirements, and is designed to match the classic style of the Book of Lindisfarne, there is no precedent for a bull motif in Celtic art, as a repeating pattern. It is a new invention. I am personally interested, in this stage of my career as a Celtic artist, in exploring new possibilities beyond the existing tradition, as I feel there is scope for the introduction of new animals to the mediaval bestiary.

When I started I had planned to make the pattern five feet wide with a large square dropped out of the middle, the proportions of which are fixed beforehand by the proportion of the bull design, which has been designed already to fit a stained glass window.

I had planned to make the bull in a 1:3 proportion, but when I showed this to Barrie, who will be making the window, he felt that the narrowest coils in the spirals on the bulls shoulders and hips would be too narrow, and therefore difficult to cut.

So I redesigned the bull to a wider proportion, of 2:5. That is, when the bull is made into a window, the same height as originally planned, the second design will be just a little wider across the shoulder spiral, and this will make it easier to cut the glass. An example of form following function. Barrie and I have been working up this series of stained glass windows, exploring the development of leaded glass window design, in which the lead came may be treated as a form line, defining the graphic outline of the Celtic design.

One main thing we are aiming at it to draw the design in such a way that it packs into the frame, with all the lines of the drawing touching each other in such a way that the glass will not need any superfluous struts of lead connecting one part to another. This is in keeping with our aim to integrate the lines of the drawing with the leading of the window.

In effect, we are taking a design such as an eagle out of an illuminated manuscript, the Lindisfarne Gospels, which was originally drawn with a quill at a very small scale, and adapting it to the relatively monumental scale of the glass window, where the lead line may be substituted for the pen line, retaining the graphic line of the drawing on a larger scale. We feel this is an area of glass window design that has not been explored in this way, at least not in the field of Celtic art, to such a degree of collaboration between graphic artist and leaded-glass window maker.

Blog 2008 WEEK 51: 1214—1220

2008-12-20T05:05:00.000-08:00

PICASSO’S PEACE DOVE

I just finished Success and Failure of Picasso, John Berger's 1965 Marxist critique of the artist’s work. According to him, Picasso was a failure by socialist standards until he joined the communist party, after which the Socialist Party failed to fully exploit him for propaganda purposes fir the rest of his life.

He concludes that Moscow should have shipped Picasso off to India for the last twenty years of his life, where he might have found social conditions so deplorable that he might have rediscovered the inspiration needed to produce more socially-relevant (successful, that is in Berger's eyes) like Guernica.

I usually find the Socialist critique to be as irrelevant as the psychoanalytic, or the Feminist critiques of art, and found Berger’s take on it to be no exception. Take for instance, the use of the image of the dove which was adopted for the 1949 poster announcing theCongres Mondial des Partisans de la Paix, which he sums up like this.

His poster of the dove became a true symbol: not so much as a result of Picasso’s powers as an artist (the drawing of the dove is evocative but superficial), but rather as a result of this movement which Picasso was serving. It needed a symbol and it claimed Picasso’s drawing.

That this happened is something of which Picasso can be rightly proud. He contributed positively to the most important struggle of our time. He made further posters and drawings. He lent his name and reputation again and again to encourage others to protest against the thereat of nuclear war. He was in a position to use his art as a means of influencing people politically, and in so far as he was able he chose to do this consciously and intelligently. I cannot believe that he was in any way mistaken or that he chose the wrong political path. But as an artist with all his powers was nevertheless wasted…In Moscow his reputation as a great man was used for propaganda purposes—whilst his art was dismissed as decadent.

The thing is, Picasso did not make the image of this bird with a political aim in mind, and so, as art criticism, the political editorial is unhelpful.

Picasso happened to like pigeons, kept them around as pets, and sometimes used them as subjects for art. The image for Picasso was of technical interest, the fact that it was a pigeon was of no particular significance to him. It might as well have been a boot.

He kept many birds, an owl, pigeons and a pair of turtle doves. In her 1960 memoir, Life With Picasso, Françoise Gilot described Picasso's turtledoves.

The pigeons cooed but the turtledoves really laughed. They were small and greyish pink, with a darker ruff around the neck. Every time we went into the kitchen to eat and Pablo launched into one of his characteristic long semi-philosophical monologues, the turtledoves would be all attention. Just at the moment he made his point, they would start to laugh. <

“These are really birds for a philosopher,” Pablo said. “All human utterance has its stupid side. Fortunately I have the turtledoves to make fun of me. Every time I think I am saying something particularly intelligent, the remind me of the vanity of it all.”

Françoise Gilot recalls how Picasso produced an earlier lithographic image of one of his pigeons.

Pablo’s disregard for conventional lithographic processes created all sorts of problems for the printers […].

Pablo had done a lithograph of one of his pigeons in a highly unconventional way. The background coat was in black lithographic ink and the pigeon itself had been painted on top of that in white gouache. Since lithographic ink has wax in it, gouache normally wouldn’t “take” very well but in spite of that fact, Pablo had carried it off brilliantly on the lithographic paper.

When Mourlot came to the Rue des Grands-Augustins and saw what Pablo had done, he said, “How do you expect us to print that? It’s not possible.”

He pointed out to Pablo that in theory, when the drawing was transferred from the paper to the stone, the gouache would protect the stone and the ink would run only onto those parts where there was no gouache; but on the other hand, on contact with the liquid ink the gouache itself would surely dissolve, at least I part, and run.

“You give it to Monsieur Tuttin; he’ll know how to handle it,” Pablo told him.

The next time we went to Mourlot’s shop, Monsieur Tuttin was still fussing about the pigeon.

“Nobody ever did a thing like that before.” He fumed. “I can’t work on it. It’ll never come out.”

“I’m sure you can handle it,” Picasso said. “Besides. I have an idea Madame Tuttin would be very happy to have a proof of the pigeon. I’ll inscribe it to her.”

“Anything but.” Monsieur replied in disgust. “Besides, with that gouache you’ve put on, it will never work.”

“All right then,” Pablo said. “I’ll take your daughter out to dinner some evening and tell her what kind of printer her father is.”

Monsieur Tuttin looked startled.

“I know, of course,” Pablo went on, “That a job like that might be a little difficult for most of the people around here, but I had an idea—mistakenly, I can see now—that you were probably the one man who could do it.” Finally, with his professional pride at stake, Monsieur Tuttin gave in grudgingly.

The dove in the poster is recognizable as an ornamental breed of pigeon, with a ruff and a fringe of feathers all around its ankles. I don't know if it was made by the same technique as the one just described, or a different technique.

Françoise Gilot remembers the selection of the image for the poster. In fact, the bird was not a dove at all, but a Milanese pigeon. Picasso had produced it in January 1949.

In his aviary, in company with many exotic birds, Matisse had four large Milanese pigeons. Their feet were not bare like most pigeons. They had feathers right down to the ground covering their claws; it was just as though the feet had white gaiters on them. One day he said to Pablo, "I ought to give these to you because they look like some you've already painted." We took them back to Vallauris with us. One of them had a very distinguished artistic and political career. Early in 1949 Pablo made a lithograph of it which turned out to be a brilliant technical success. In lithography one can get an absolute black quite easily, but since lithographic ink has wax in it, when you dilute it with water to make a light-gray wash, the lithographic stone does not take the wash very evenly. That makes what is called in French, la peau de crapaud, a surface mottled like a toad's skin. But in this lithograph Pablo had succeeded in making a wash that gave the impression of an extremely transparent gray, with gradations that were an amazing tour de force.

About a month later, the poet and novelist Louis Aragon, who served as a kind of intellectual wheelhorse for the French Communist Party, came to the studio in the Rue des Grands-Augustins to prod Pablo into giving him a sketch he had promised him for the poster advertising the Communist-sponsored World Peace Congress soon to be held at the Salle Pleyel. Aragon looked through a folder of recent lithographs, and when he saw that one, the pigeon looked so much like a dove to him that he had the idea of making it the symbol of the congress. Pablo agreed and by the end of the day, the poster and the "dove" had already begun to appear on Paris walls. In its countless printings and reprintings, first as an original lithograph and later in reproduction, the poster went around the world in the cause--or at least in the name of peace. —Françoise Gilot, Life with Picasso, 273

So that is how it came about that Aragon mistook the pigeon for a dove: it was his idea to have it printed as a poster to promote peace, not Picasso's.

Yet because of this accident, which happened a month after the work was completed, Picasso is approved by John Berger for having produced the dove as a statement in support of the Peace movement. He overlooks the chief point of interest to to an artist, which is the fact that this image was first produced as an experimental lithograph. What was the nature of that experiment? In what way was the experiment a success? Was it an "evocative, but superficial drawing", as Berger says, whatever that means?

I do not think that is a very useful art criticism, compared to artist Françoise Gillot's highly qualified assessment of the piece: that it was it a "tour de Force; a "brilliant technical success". The information she provides, her insider information, really does help me to understand better what it is that I am looking at here.

What John Berger merely criticises as a "superficial drawing" is not even a drawing. It is a lithographic print, made directly from a white on black image painted with incredible accuracy (in that the result looks like a photograph of a pigeon, but is really a broadly-brushed monochrome gouache painting) with water-based gouache on lithographic paper coated with waxy black ink, transferred to a wet stone, which accepts only the black ink. This offset transfer was somehow reproduced by master lithographer Tuttin, who found it was a greater challenge than any he had met before.

I only wish some art critic worth his salt would explain to me how waterproof black ink and opaque white water-based paint can be controlled so as to make a seamless blend of graduated greys blended smoothly from one extreme to another, while at the same time producing the illusion of a photographic image of a pigeon, without the white paint beading or the black ink breaking up in blotches. The printer said it as impossible to do. I believe him. The question is, how was it done?

It is superficial of John Berger to judge artwork according to whether it serves some larger, humanitarian cause. The production of a work of art such as this already performs a service, to culture, through developing the craft further by a collaboration between two masters of their respective fields, at the top of their form. That is how art inches forward, generation after generation. Each generation of artists has the responsibility to humanity as a whole to break new ground in eachfield of art.

Recycling the result as propaganda is irrelevant to the work Picasso and Tuttin did, exploring new directions in lithography. Berger concludes that Picasso should be proud that his lithograph was found servicable to the organisers of a peace conference, but that has got nothing to do with the success or failure of his art work.

Even if Picasso's support of the peace movement was more than shrewd publicity on his part, it is not relevant whether an artist’s work contributes to society in Berger's sense. Opinions so biased by politics hardly count.

Political art criticism is not about art. Instead, it is about political beliefs. Berger uses the artist's work as a soapbox to declare how far Picasso furthers Berger's ideology—which he calls a success—or not—which Berger calls failure! That is a poor excuse for a critique.

I expect art criticism to help me understand art better. In my mind, an artist’s intention is more relevant than the critic's politics. The critic should help me to understand what that artist is doing with that brush; tell me whatI am looking at; say what the artist sees in it. That's what I want. Not a measure of its propaganda quotient.

I wish I knew what Picasso intended by making that print. Lots of possibilities spring to mind. Perhaps he chose that subject because he liked the look of the bird—as good a reason as any. As it was a gift from his old friend and fellow pigeon fancier, Henri Matisse, he maybe meant to celebrate that shared interest, or maybe made the print for Henri, to pay him back.

Likely this print was one in a series of bird prints and [paintings he had been developing for some time, carrying over discoveries from one to the next.

Maybe pigeons make an easy subject to paint, soft grey plumage lends itself to lithography; feathers suggest dry-brush strokes, bringing to mind brushwork in white resist on top of black tusche, producing a realistic image of a bird with the barest of means.

Maybe it meant a lot to Picasso that his little boy, Claude, loved old M. Tuttin, and called him Monseiur Colombe, after all the pigeons he printed for his father. Perhaps Picasso did the pigeon print for Claude. Perhaps he did it so that M. Tuttin would have a reason to visit, for the little boy's sake.

These pigeon prints were a part of daily life at chez Picasso during the months leading up to the birth of his daughter, Paloma. Had she been a boy, would he have called him Colombus?

Maybe he named her Paloma after the birds he was working on all through Françoise's pregnancy, and it was merely serendipitous that she was born on the day of peace conference for which used the lithograph was used.

In any case, the bird already had many deep personal associations forPicasso, the image brought together many old familiar feelings in his mind.

Whatever was in his mind, one thing we know, he did not intend to depict the bird in the poster as the dove of peace, nor produce it in a spirit of humanitrian service.

His friend, the writer Ilya Ehrenburg, recalled a conversation the with Picasso’s about his pigeons' unwitting contribution to his career as an artist, if not to world peace.

Picasso likes them, and always keeps some; laughing, he said that pigeons were greedy and cantankerous birds; he could not understand why they had been made into a symbol of peace. […]

“Poor old Aragon,” Picasso chuckled as soon as Aragon had left his studio. “He doesn’t know anything about pigeons. And as for the gentle dove, what a myth that is! There’s no crueller animal. I had some here and they pecked a poor little pigeon to death because they didn’t like it. They pecked its eyes out, then pulled it ot pieces. It was horrible. How’s that for a symbol of Peace?”

—Picasso, Creator and Destroyer, Arianna Stassinopolous Huffington, New York, 1988: p. 347

Picasso’s lithograph of the Milanese pouter succeeds as a work of art to the extent that it achieves the effect of a painting by extremely economic means, using an innovative technique. The resulting little masterpiece is a success for those reasons, not because it is a universally recognisable image.

It does not need to be instantly recognisable, or readily understandable, for a work of art to succeed. Many works by Picasso are not easily understood, not readily linked to a slogan as this one was. That does not make those less-accessible works any less successful as art works, as Berger's political beliefs would seem to imply.

Whether the worker can appreciate the work of art is no criterion for judging it, however well an image may work as a poster. It should not matter to the critic whether a work of art has popular appeal or not.

Rather than tell me if Picasso's work is socially relevant, I would rather John Berger concerned himself more with how the work was made, and why. A criticism of this lithograph, for instance, might show how Picasso’s many creative innovations in lithography contributed to the development of the craft as an artist's medium in the mid-twentieth century. It would also be instructive to consider the role of the collaboration between artist and lithographer, and the way in which Picasso collaborated with many master artisans in various fields throughout his life, leaving a legacy of crafts that benefited a great number of people who were involved in his work.

Françoise Gilot provides some insight into the methods used to make this image. As an artist, she had this advantage over the art critic: she knew what she was talking about. But we still do not know if the Picasso's brilliant print was a vindication of the artist's revolutionary approach to lithography, or thanks to poor Monsieur Tuttin, who had to figure out how to "handle it", or risk having his daughter invited out to dinner with Picasso.

Blog 2008 WEEK 50: 1207—1213

2008-12-13T05:04:00.000-08:00

Cumdach Molaise Celtic Cross Underpainting

The middle of this Celitc cross has an interesting geometry. It is an oval based on a square, with four crescent-like shapes set off on the diagonals from the square. The sketch above shows the geometry of the construction. I produced it on the canvas using straight edge and compasses only. The pattern is built up on a square grid of 22 x 26 inches.

The underpainting is in india red acrylic, glazed over with untramarine blue.

The underpainting in progress, a closeup detail.

The completed underpainting. The blue over the red produced purple shadows in the background behind the figures. White highlights have been added. Next, colours will be added in a series of transparent layers over this design, with clear layers of varnish between each layer.

Blog 2008 WEEK 49: 1130—1206

2008-12-06T05:04:00.000-08:00

Hound and Heron Carpet Page I completed and signed the finished painting of The Hound and Heron carpet page design.

The Hound and Heron Carpet Page, by Aidan Meehan, 1992 -2008.

Tempera and Chinese ink on paper.

Blog 2008 WEEK 48: 1123—1129

2008-11-29T05:02:00.000-08:00

CUMDACH MOLAISE CELTIC CROSS DESIGN

Draft for Cumdach Molaise painting in pencil on gesso-primed canvas, 22 x 26

I laid out the plan for a Celtic cross carpet page pattern, taken from the medieval book cover called the Cumdach Molaise (The Cover [of the gospel book, now lost] of Molaise [Saint Laisrean of Devenish]) , in the National Museum of Ireland, in Dublin.

The pattern, I have found, fits a square grid of 11 x 13. I laid out the canvas at 22 x 26 inches, and drafted the square grid, then the panels of the border all around the edges, which are of three sorts. In the corners are L-shaped panels, and in the middle of the four sides are T-shaped panels, with rectangles in between.

The grill surrounding the panels is one half of the grid unit wide. The ring of the Celtic cross is found by connecting points on the diagonal grid which connects up with the underlying grillwork pattern. The diagonal grid intersects with the square grid to pinpoint the mid-points of the circles forming the ring of the Celtic Cross in the middle of the pattern.

This is all work I have been studying for years, already worked out through a number of previous studies of this same, late-medieval Irish masterpiece(one of the last produced by the workshop of Devenish Island, in County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, completed in 1025 AD. Shortly after this, the Culdees disbanded, so this design represents the culmination of a local tradition, perhaps the last major artistic output of Devenish Abbey while still under Culdee rule).

The geometry in this picture looks complex becasue I was trying to find the construction of the oval in the middle, joined by four curves leading to the arms of the cross.

I knew how to construct it with compasses and a straight edge separately, but want to derive it from within the framework of the existing grid, to see if this was the method used by the designer.

If it can be found to unfold naturally, by repeatable geometric means, using only straight edge and compasses, this will confirm the method of craft geometry as worked out by the original designer. This problem has stumped me for months. I filled a notebook with studies working out the geometry of the middle of the design.

In a related painting of another Celtic cross I did last year, Declan’s Cross, I worked out the geometry of the middle part and applied it by tracing it onto the rectangular grid. But now I want to combine the two parts of the construction, using just compasses and straight edge, closer to how the original would have been done. The geometry as shown here is far more complicated than necessary, because I was exploring intersections between the square grid and the diagonal grid, looking for relationships to coincide with the lines of the design. I found a great number of these. I almost regret having to proceed to draft the pattern, and bury all these highly suggestive forms that come to light through this kind of geometrical play. However, I think will be able to revisit the design once I work the final form.

Blog 2008 WEEK 47 1116—1122

2008-11-22T05:02:00.000-08:00

On the Movie Set of Frankie and Alice This week I was working on the set of Frankie and Alice the movie, co-produced by Halle Berry, directed by Geoffrey Saks.

Aidan Meehan, November 2008

On the last morning I was picked up by a driver and driven in a silver SUV over to the old Riverview Hospital on the outskirts of town, where the movie was being shot. My job was to coach an actress to able to be able to reproduce a signature for a scene in which she has to sign the name of the character. The part required a special style if handwriting, the character was supposed to have been educated in a private school in the southeren USA sometime in the ‘40’s. I chose Palmer Method handwriting as the likely style, and took several days teaching the basic lettering. I wrote the signatures myself, for the close ups. But the scene had to be shot with the actress signing the name herself, and for this she had to be coached so that she could write something that would resemble the close up of the handwriting. In the final take, the result looked close enough, the director was happy. And I felt proud of my temporary student’s performance. I was brought up by the wrangler to see the scene on the LCD screen. A memorable moment for me was standing next to Halle Berry while we watched the playback, close enough to smell her subtle floral perfume.

Blog 2008 WEEK 46: 1109—1115

2008-11-15T18:35:00.000-08:00

Celtic Art: Bull Designs by Aidan Meehan Last month, I started working the bull motif on vellum drafting paper. This month, I began to transfer drawings to paper as I went along, partly to record the progress of the design, to paint later, and partly to save on expensive drafting vellum which I'm blazing through like a bush fire. The first animal patterns in Celtic painting looked like jewelry, as if drawn on metal with the background of the pattern dug out and flooded with enamel. The early painters drew on parchment and flooded the background with ink or paint. Painting Celtic animal patterns on canvas with a brush ans acrylic paint is the same kind of thing, only on a larger scale. To make a pattern on paper look like enamel laid into a metal surface, or fenced in by wire, the metal is shown by a narrow band of empty space between two parallel lines drawn all around the figure, defining the animal's body and separating the fields of colour. In painting the design on a page, the narrow band might be outlined in thinned red paint, and coloured yellow or white or left blank to suggest gold or silver, We see this done in the miniature paintings in the oldest books. The backgrounds painted inside and separated by these narrow double lines are like the cells inside wires in cloisoneed enamel work, or enamelled fields sunk in Celtic gold champleve jewelry. Backgrounds were often filled in with black ink to look like another kind of enamel jewelry called silver niello. Niello is tarry, black glass-like stuff melted into the dugout background of the patterns in Celtic silver jewellery, fired in the kiln so as to fuse into the silver. These kinds of treatment borrowed from metalwork show up in early Celtic paintings, such as those in the Book of Durrow, as white figures on a black ground, with inner parts of the figures painted green, red or yellow. Cloisonne is gold wire soldered onto the flat metal surface, then filled with enamel, or a mosaic of garnet chips cut to fit the shape of the cell, and the wire hammered flat to hold the chip I place, as seen in Anglo-Saxon jewels of the early middle ages. Anglo-Saxon and Celtic schools of metalwork contributed equally to the early conventions of Celtic painting.

If we think of wire work enclosing fields of enamel (which is melted glass) as the basis of Celtic animal design, the the application of Celtic art to leaded glass window design, with lead came shaped and soldered to hold bits of glass together, is very much a return to the origins of the art, only on a monumental instead of a miniature scale.

There is a precedent by the way for enlarging designs from prototypes found in jewlery. It is found in the medieval engraved stones of Scotland, and Pictish animals carved on stone slabs. The scale of Celtic animal patterns in stained glass windows is very much the same as that of the animal designs on these stones, and I see stained glass design as a medium for Celtic art that related to those stone carvings. Anyway, thoughts as these naturally pass through the mind when designing these Celtic-style bulls. In the rough painting I made of bull 3, draft 3, below, the contour outlines are left empty, as they might be left in a miniature painting. At the same time, speaking of stained-glass windows, the grille of double lines can be taken for strips of lead cut to size, bent to fit and soldered together. Here the lead grille has two thicknesses. The draft is done to a quarter of the full scale size of a stained glass window measuring 60”x 24”, so the came will be of two thicknesses, 1/4 and 3/8 thick. We may use a third thickness, as we have done in the poast, but that can wait. The main thing for now is that the outer edge of the bull, and some of the main lines will taken up by the thicker leading, and the subordinate lines of the inner details will be of thinner lead.

This early draft is not yet completely worked out, but it is still worth keeping all the same. Transferring from tracing to paper not only records the progress, but the drawing on good paper can be useful to try out colours later.

For now, I am trying to key colours to the background, which is to be ruby glass in the window when finished, but here is Indian red, or terracotta. These days, India red is my preferred colour for underpainting Celtic designs. That is the pigment, iron-oxide red. Iron oxide comes both transparent and opaque, and in a black as well as a red. Very useful stuff.

Painting with acrylic in a transparent matte medium lets layers or glazes of different transparent colours to be built up. Yellow over blue makes a green, and so on. Or mix it with opaque titanium white to cover up underpainting, to make correction. You can see the whiteout in Bull 3 draft 3.

Acrylics are as good as designers gouaches for roughing out a colour scheme. Both can be painted over on top of one another and cover up the underpainting equally well, but acrylic paint can also be used for transparent overpainting, or be treated like watercolours, which gouache cannot.

I want to use colours that will stand out as in light contrast against the red background. Red is the equivalent of black, optically, as well as in the conventions of Celtic art. Where black nielllo was often the background filler for silver, red enamel was most often used as the background filler for gold, in early British Celtic art, so that red and black are interchangeable as background colours.

08/10/01: bull 3, draft 2, 2.5-HB pencil, Fabriano Accademia 78# paper, acrylic glazed paint

In bull 4, draft 3, the background is been glazed black over red. And the contours are painted in red, so that the colours stand out more against the background. The pale blue, white and yellow is the same in both, but look more intense with the grille lines in red. In Celtic miniature painting, the red oxide form line was used regularly as the underpainting, then painted over in a series of transparent painted layers, with black being painted over the top, last, when the rest of the painting was finished. That final black line, of course may be translated in to blackened lead came when the design is blown up to the relatively monumental scale of the stained glass window, but for the preliminary underpainting, it is better to keep the black until the very last, and use red in the meantime.

08/10/03:, 1.5-F pencil, Fabriano Accademia 78# paper, acrylic glazes

Meanwhile, pencil drafts on tracing vellum continue. In bull 1, draft 5 of the hind leg still goes under the tail as before, but the crossed legs come from the far side of the bull’s body instead of the nearside, as before; The tail goes over the top of the body, weaving over and under the legs and the body consistently throughout. As a result of this improvement, the leading foreleg now passes over the neck of the bull, instead of behind, as it did in earlier drafts. Now all four bulls have to be redone, to reflect these exhanges. Each drawing takes 2 hours, four drawings is a good day’s work. Transferring the drawing to paper takes just as long. Drafting, transferring to paper and painting up a single draft is a good day’s work.

But work on one bull cannot not progress continuously. It can take a while for a problem to surface, and the work must be set aside to before the solution becomes clear. Mean time, there are drawings to be transferred to paper, inked up, or painted. By varying the work, the mind take a break from the problem that may have stopped work on one design, by turning to the next variation and working on it. In this way, the work progresses without having to down tools every time some snag pops up. It may even often gets solved by some insight coming out of doing another drawing in the series, because all these drawing have so much in common.

08/10/04: bull 1 draft 5 1.5-F pencil, 20# drafting vellum. Nearside foreleg forward

08/10/07: bull 2, draft 4 1.5-F pencil, 20# drafting vellum. Nearside foreleg back.

Turning to bull 2, the weaving is reversed here. The order of the legs is the reverse of that of bull 1, draft 5, above. The direction of the spirals also reverses from one bull to the next, it seems, but spirals in bull 2 will turn in the same direction as bull 1 when the drafting vellum is flipped over, as it when transferring the drawing onto good paper.

The idea behind these variations is to make clear to the viewer that the drawing is not mechanically reproduced, as by cutting and pasting, flipping or rotating. That kind of repetition is just puttering about, and the mind of the viewer most often dismisses it as of no deeper interest that appears at first glance. And such a pattern often does not deserve a second glance, for because there is nothing more to it, even if it is drawn by hand.

Making the design by reversing the weaving or by reversing the spirals from one repeat to the next, each of the four quarters in a group of four has to be redesigned from the ground up. The viewer’s mind takes this in, maybe not consciously, maybe not all at first glance, but the mind takes enough notice of subtle variations that tends to look it over again. Once the attention of the viewer is captured, it must be rewarded with solutions to the puzzles – how come these two bulls look like mirror images, but their feet are different. Or this one’s spirals should turn the opposite way to that one’s, but they are all the same. And if in two matched bulls the legs go the same way in each, but are hooked up to spirals turning opposite ways, how can that be. Then, on a closer look, the matching pair are discovered to be entirely different. This makes the pattern both rewarding and stimulating to look at: the longer you look, the more you find. But variety must be put in place, first of all, for this kind of pattern to work as well as it should.

08/10/07: bull 2 draft 5, traced on Clearprint vellum, previous figure on back showing through.

Bull 2 draft 5 shows how produce a variation on translucent drafting vellum: turn over the vellum, retrace some lines as they are, adjust others on the fly.

The ghost in this image is a previous draft not altogether erased. Transferring to paper preserves the design in a presentable form. It may be used in another application later, made into a pen and ink drawing, or combined with another variation to make a small panel or border. To transfer the new drawing onto good paper, flip the new drawing face down onto paper, rub out the old image on the back side (now facing up) and pencil over the new line drawing from the back of the sheet. Compare the treatment of the hip spiral in bull 2, draft 5 in the transferred version below with that of draft 4, above.

08/10/07: bull 2 draft 5, transferred in pencil on 90#Grumbacher waterclour paper

The spiral coils are more evenly space apart. The spiral also runs around the fore edge of the thigh and down to the hook in an even contour.

Bull 2 draft 5, transferred is the same as bull 2, draft 5 on vellum, only it has been reversed in the process of transferring it to watercolour paper. I like the curvy triangle of background in the middle of the body. This is repeated in the space behind the shoulder spiral, but I do not like the background to touch the outer edge as it does here. The background above the bull’s tail is too close to it. I'd rather have a pathway running between these two background areas, to keep them apart. The reason why these background areas—one inside the bull and one outside—should be separated by some kind of no-man's-land, is that the whole design should work as a black and white design, even though I am planning to use colour, not black only. But if the background was filled black throughout, the background triangle on the shoulder is so close to the background above it that it could look like an axe had chopped a wedge out of the poor thing's neck, and that wouldn't do. Were the band along the back to be carried along the edge and on up to join the head, that would do the job.

And the way the spiral opens out behind the head makes two loose ends—not a happy conclusion for any spiral. In spiral design, loose ends are a no no. So that has to be fixed. But the way the ear hangs out from the head now, leaves the face less cluttered: good. That can stay.

08/10/08 bull 3 draft 3, acrylic glazes on 90# Grumbacher watercolour paper

This drawing was transferred to heavier paper because the lighter bond paper was not thick enough to hold all the wet paint to go on it, and cockles, or dries bumpy. The lightweight stuff is better suited to pencil drawing, or light pen and ink, with no solid masses. Solids need heavier weight, at least 90#, preferably 120#. I'm just using up some old stock I want rid of. Heavier paper is more opaque. It can't be traced through on a light table. That is why the transfer method is so useful than a light table, for heavy paper. Besides. I don't really have a light table. The colours here are not final. I am sorting out the colour scheme by trial and error, balancing the contrast between background and foreground, as well between colour and tone. Inside the bull, the paths around the outside want to be white or yellow, like silver or gold, with other colours in the interior of the body. I say like silver or gold, because in painting I do not want to use gold leaf to represent gold. That would be as wrong as sticking an actual rose petal on a painting of a rose. Thirdly, the triple spirals have to connect with the edge contour, as well as to each other, and to some parts of the body. I am still trying to work out how this can be made to work, without adjacent coils of spiral winding up with the same colour.

08/10/08 bull 4 draft 4, pencil on Grumbacher watercolour paper

At this point, having bit off more colour scheme than I can chew, I take a sort of break, having enough on my plate transferring from tracings to paper.

08/10/09: bull 1, draft 5, pencil on Grumbacher watercolour paper

Bull 1, draft 5 is the same as the one on vellum from October 4, only flipped over and transferred to paper.

In this draft the path along the spine runs all around the bull just as it should do, starting under the chin, along the belly, down the hind leg, around under the tail and along the back to the neck, where it hooks into the spiral there.

The head rests on a delta-shaped end of the path running parallel to the underside, winding into the hip spiral. That can be a background colour, along with the inner part of the hind leg, both of which wind into the hip spiral. These could be two different colours, say blue and green, and the third arm of the spiral, which links to the shoulder spiral, could be a third colour, say violet.

The shoulder spiral would then have three different colours, apart from white and yellow, which are reserved for the edge around the body and the legs, alternating between the legs. The neck spiral would then have a white coil from the back edge, a yellow coil from the edging of the front leg, leaving a third coil to pick up the blue or the green.

According to this imaginary colour scheme, the third coil from the neck spiral would run into the shoulder coil, which already had a yellow from the front leg, and a violet from the hip spiral, so it is filled with three different colours.

What this all means is that this particular bull design, then, is just about ready to dance a traditional jig, since it can be painted according to the rules of Celtic art, with yellow and white applied to the edge contours and the head and tail, like an enamelled pin. And inside the bull can be filled with colours in such a way that no two colours are adjacent, especially in the coils. That at least is the ideal, in the most traditional style. Whether I can keep up this happy colouring in all four variations of the bull, I don't know. It's something to shoot for, anyway.

Blog 2008 WEEK 45: 1102—1108

2008-11-08T03:21:00.000-08:00

Designing a Celtic Animal Overall Pattern

For the past couple of months I have been working on a motif for a painting on canvas of dancing bulls in an overall pattern, developing variations—the bulls are decorated with spirals which connecting the legs and the joints of the bull's shoulders and haunches, and the bull’s legs, whether stepping forward or backward, need to be custom-designed to fit into the the spirals, according to the peculiar logic of Celtic animal art. The original drawings are 15 x 6 inches / 45 x 18 cms.

BULL 1: hindmost leg under tail 08/09/16, bull no. 1, draft 2, pencil on drafting vellum 08/09/17, bull variation no. 1, draft 3, pencil on drafting vellum

In bull 1, draft 2, the two feet in the middle are uncrossed. In bull 1, draft 3, the feet are crossed. When weaving the animals together, their legs need to be positioned in two ways, so that the bull needs to be designed in these two different variations, at least.

After doing bull 1, draft 3, I see that the front leg should cross under the back leg, or else go under the body, because if the legs are to weave like knotwork, the rules of weaving forbid crossing over or under twice in a row. The foreleg facing the viewer here crosses over the body, then crosses over the hindleg, so it crosses over twice in a row, and that is to be avoided if possible. As well as making variation in design according to how the legs weave, the body spirals may be made to turn in one direction or another, and this is another way to spin off more variations. As it is, I have all the spirals turning in the one direction, but if I want to place the bulls back to back, with spirals turning in opposite directions, their legs need to be joined to the spirals in differently, according to the position of the legs.

BULL 2: hindmost leg over tail

08/09/16: bull 2, draft 1, pencil on drafting vellum.

This tracing is reversed, bull 2 should be looking to the left.

The spirals in both bulls turn the same way, then they face each other. Though when they face in opposite directions, the spirals stay turning all the same way in this pair of bulls, so the way the spiral pathways connect to the legs has to be redesigned in each case. This is not the only design change that can be seen here. The left foreleg of bull 1 steps under the bull’s head. In bull 2, it is the right foreleg that leads. In the first draft, the foreleg is joined to the neck spiral. In the second draft, the leg looks more realistic joined to the shoulder spiral instead. In bull 2, draft 1, the path forming the spine of the bull disappears behind the head, as does a path from the neck spiral. I am unhappy about these loose ends, and will try to make them join up somehow. I feel that, as a rule, spiral designs applied to animal pattern ought to form part of the foreground contour of the animal form, or else form part of the background, which may be filled in, in contrast. The animal should be as two dimensional as possible, so that a spiral path may not go under the ear of the animal, but must go around it (spiral paths are not supposed to weave over or under, like knots). There has to be a balance between abstract surface pattern, and the recognisable figure of an animal. One should not be sacrificed to the other.

08/09/16: bull 02, draft 02, pencil on drafting vellum.

08/09/24: bull 2, draft 3, pencil on drafting vellum.

In drfat 3, Bull 2 looks left, as it ought to. Legs on the side facing the viewer are crossed, to match those of the bull 1, draft 2. Spurs on the hooves have now gone. Instead the legs have cuffs on them, which is a convention in Pictish art, but don’t look quite right here, either. But that does not bother me so much as I am more concerned with sorting spiral paths now.

In bull 2, draft 3, the spine path hooks into the neck spiral and also branches on behind the ear. I prefer that the paths should not branch, and so I move the shoulder spiral up, to lop off the loose branching path in draft 4. It’s a subtle change, hard to see. However, this leaves an empty triangle of background between the path and the outer edge, and I would rather the background should be all contained within the continuous contour running all around the body.

08/09/25: bull 02, draft 04, pencil on drafting vellum.

These four variations are not the only possibilities, but I reckon they are the minimum that I need to design, in order to give the overall panel some variety. I have not decided whether I will use the spirals in opposite directings or all in the same direction, I will have to see how these combinations look, when laid out in multiple repeating patterns, before I decide whether to use all four variations, or not. For now, I am designing bulls containing shoulder and hip spirals turning in both directions so that I will have room to choose when I see how they look when laid out together in different combinations.

BULL 3: hindmost leg over tail

08/09/25: bull 03, draft 01, pencil on drafting vellum.

Bull 3 is like bull 1, in the way the legs are arranged, but its spirals turn right, instead of left.

BULL 4: hindmost leg under tail 08/09/25: bull 04, draft 01, pencil on drafting vellum. 08/09/25: bull 04, draft 02, pencil on drafting vellum. 08/09/25: bull 04, draft 03, pencil on drafting vellum.

If I do not use all these variations in this painting, they will not go to waste. I still have the left-overs to use another way, another day.

Blog 2008 WEEK 44: 1026—1101

2008-11-01T03:19:00.000-07:00

Letter From Doctor Jenner I stopped off at a yardsale on the way home, and picked up a book, Professional Anecdotes of Medical Literature, [Volume 2 of 3, London, 1825], with a letter bound into it, dated 18 from Dr. Edward Jenner, in reply to a request that by a Mr. Phillips that Dr. Jenner might vaccinate his newborn child. Jenner replies he can’t perform the inoculation himself but adds that I consider the vaccine lancet in the hand of Dr. John King just as safe as in my own—high praise indeed from the discoverer of vaccination himself. The book is a lovely find, hand bound in black morroco tooled in gold leaf. I have been collecting samples of handwriting ephemera for years now, and as this one is of special historical interest, I reproduce it here. The handwriting is interesting to me. I like the swept back-tail of his occasional letter "y". The slope of the writing is remarkably consistent, from start to finish, quite unselfconsciously written, and yet surprisingly legible although obviously written at speed—At least I find it legible. But in case I'm the only one who does, I include a transcript of the handwriting below each page in turn (this blog has a bad habit of unpredictably reducing the size of the images as it uploads. Jenner's letter is actually 25 cms wide, his writing quite large and clear; I uploaded the images at 15 cms screen onscreen width, but see they have shrunk in transit, maybe if you right click and open the image in a new window?...). Cheltenham, Jan’y. 16 1807 Dear Sir, I congratulate you and Mrs. Phillips on the addition to your Flock. It is my intention to be in Town soon; but how soon I cannot at the present moment positively say. My movements will be regulated by those of the college of Physicians & the house of commons. The former have not yet finished their enquiry which will, when competed, be laid before the House. This enquiry will lay all those troublesome ghosts which have so long haunted the Metropolis with their Ox-faces and dismal hootings against Vaccination. However, tis all for the best—you may depend upon it the new investigation will prove the touchstone of the vaccine discovery. I have not yet seen your Monthly Mag. For the present month. Probably you may not have inserted the very interesting piece of intelligence I rec’d. from Madrid. This supposition induces me to enclose it. What a glorious enterprize! I have made Peace with Spain, and quite adore her philanthropic monarch. Could not this be touched upon by some of those who, thro’ you, introduce pathetic stories into the world?

A word more respecting your little one. Altho’ I should be happy to

shield it myself from the speckled Monster, yet I would advise you not long to wish my coming to Town. I will just add that I consider the vaccine lancet in the hand of Dr. John King just as safe as in my own.

Pray present my best wishes to Mrs. Phillips and tell her I have not forgotten her civilities. Yr very faithful S’t. E. Jenner

Blog 2008 WEEK 43: 1019—1025

2008-10-25T03:19:00.000-07:00

Louis Vuiton-Holt Renfrew Event Postscript Malcolm Parry's Column, Vancouver Sun, Oct. 25, 2008: “HIGH HOLTIGE: Seventy-five moneyed folk entered the Holt Renfrew store at dinnertime Wednesday, not for shaking down at a charity auction but to be hosted by Holts president Caryn Lerner and the Louis Vuitton firm's North American president-CEO, Daniel Lalonde. Cocktails were served amid displays of Paris-based Vuitton's high-end purses, accessories, shoes and suchlike. Let's see if Army & Navy store owner Jacqui Cohen's chat with Lalonde leads to ultra-luxe Vuitton footwear appearing in her million-dollar shoe sale next spring.” Did I mention I got this link to view pictures from the Vuitton event, includes shots of some of my placecards:

Http://www.glassjarmedia.com/lvholts A lot of photos of the event there, divided into indexes.

Index 1 has pictures of placecards I wrote for the names of Angela Leung, Thomas Gaultier, Caryn Lerner, Charles Delapalme, which were posted in the blog for week 42.

Index 16 has another picture of one of the placecards I wrote, this one for Judith Korbin. http://www.glassjarmedia.com/large-256.html

Here is an enlargement of the photo, although it is not focused on the placecard itself, I am pleased to see my handiwork in such a classy setting Never mind the caviar! Mmmm—Tasty calligraphy!

2008 WEEK 42: 1012—1018: LOUIS VUITON-HOLT RENFREW EVENT: CALLIGRAPHY

2008-10-18T03:08:00.000-07:00

LOUIS VUITON-HOLT RENFREW EVENT: CALLIGRAPHY

Table Placecards

These are four of about 100 placecards I wrote over the course of this weekend for Jane Gill and Associates, the Toronto firm organising the Louis Vuiton event at Holt Renfrew on October 22nd. The process took about a day to set up, selecting the quills, cutting them, testing them out, then cutting and testing again, a finicky business. Then the ink had to be prepared, the copperas ink I made myself is temperamental stuff, and so more testing follows. When the pen and the ink are working well, I can test the paper, which luckily, in this case, was good quality, smooth, hot-pressed rag stock, took the ink without having to treat it in any way. Cranes is a highly-regarded brand of stationery among professional calligraphers. These cards were embossed with a small four-leafed flower motif the size of a dime, and a straight line all across the bottom. I could have done without the embossed line, as I prefer to have the option to use a ruled line or not, and if it is built in to the paper, this limits the lettering in a number of ways. In this case, it has to fit between the ruled line and the floral motif. Since the descending loops of the writing cannot cross over the embossed ridge in off-hand writing, the loops have to be shortened to allow the tall caps and ascending loops to pass below the motif without bumping thieir heads. Really, the decoration of the placecard should be left to the calligrapher to supply. Plain, smooth place cards allow the calligrapher the most freedom, and therefore are the best choice if you want the writing to look it best. Once the pen, ink and paper have been sorted, the names can be written out on a sheet of paper similarin quality to that of the card. The list needs to be written out several times over, until the design settles into shape, and the muscles warm to the task, and the pen and ink relax and flow together happily enough to produce an easy-looking result. The longest name determines how small the lettering has to be in order to fit onto the card, to keep them all consistent in appearance. The roughs are measured out to size, with pencil guides for height and slope, and all names written over again to practice the movement, and the flourishes for the lettering. When the name looks satisfactory, it is then written directly onto card or envelope. About one in three are rejected, for one reason or another. For eighty names, I was provided with 200 cards, and ran out of them all. Luckily the organisers had extra stock on hand. There were some last minute cards needing to be written, so I was invited to be on hand until everyone was there, it was fun to see. I was shown to a small office, and set up my ink and quills and penknife, and various organisers popped in with cards to be done while they waited. As the style was freehand and direct, this was possible. Mostly it was just redoing a card already done, that perhaps got damaged, or was discovered to be misspent when the guest arrived for example. People arriving were directed to a table where all the cards were waiting to be picked up, each in a little envelope to match, with the name on the envelope as well. The array on the table looked quite amazing, not a sight you would ordinarily ever see, but I did not think to bring a camera with me. For the event, three long tables were dressed like a stage setting, each under a canopy. As I was leaving, I saw the lineup of black-clad waiters, one for every two guests, standing outside the dining room waiting to enter on a signal to serve the main course in a choreographed formation. Gossip had it that everything was flown in from Toronto to be sure it looked exactly as planned beforehand. You can check out the pictures of the whole things by clicking on this link. http://www.glassjarmedia.com/lvholts

Photo © evaan kheraj 2008 Photo © evaan kheraj 2008 Photo © evaan kheraj 2008 Photo © evaan kheraj 2008 Details, Details Here are a couple of details I have taken from the photos above, showing lettering only. The place cards are by Cranes, and were about 3 inches wide. The writing was done with a quill, as shown in the photo I posted to last weeks blog. This name was about average length. The name below was one of the longer ones. Both had to be written in a size and style that would match. The second name is slightly compressed, but not noticeably more than the first example.

The lettering is copperplate script written with a Canada goose quill cut to the width and angle of nib that will produce the lettering needed.

2008 WEEK 41: 10 05—1012: BULL WINDOW VARIATION 3, DRAFT 2, Louis Vuiton Calligraphy, 28-square step pattern

2008-10-12T15:08:00.000-07:00

BULL WINDOW VARIATION 3, DRAFT 2, Louis Vuiton Calligraphy, 28-square step pattern Bull variation 3, draft 2, in which the front right of the bull is placed forward, and the spirals turn towards the right from their centres outwards.

This variation has been selected for the plan for the second, wider stained glass window pattern. The paths have all been redrawn so that the narrowest path of knot or spiral will be at least 1.5 inches wide, as any thinner will be difficult to cut, or, in a long piece, could weaken the window. The look overall is clean, and the wider coiled spirals appear practicable for cutting. Brass-heart came my be used on the longest pieces of glass. We are comfortable with 1.25" minimum width of glass on the longer strips, and would not want to go any thinner. The eye may be blown in a hemisphere of a ruby red dipped in black for the pupil, and set in a bezel of lead came.

CALLIGRAPHY FOR LOUIS VUITON EVENT Meanwhile, I am writing place cards for the upcoming Louis Vuiton event at Holt Renfrew, Vancouver BC.

28-SQUARE STEP PATTERN

This is the 28-square step pattern designed to fit into a 30-inch square with !/2-inch border which I started to sketch in the notebook posted in last week's blog. The pattern is built up from four repeating squares like tiles, and it reflects like a mirror image, above and below, and from one side to another.

Mock-up of Dancing Bulls Panel This is a preliminary mock-up of the 36x60 panel I have been working on, showing the 28-square step pattern, as it would look on a grid of 1 inch. As this is a quickly-assembled mechanical, computer-aided pasteup, for my own reference, it gives only a very rough idea of the panel as it will look when painted by hand. Not only is it colourless, but it is also a lifeless mechanical drawing, lacking all the character that only the artist's hand can give.

It is not truly a Celtic pattern, made of just the same single variation, flipped and mirrored, without weaving or variation. It gives a fair idea of how it might look.

The step pattern is based on a dot grid of one-inch squares. This means that the motif is 3 inches across, and 7.5 inches wide. The quarter-panel detail below shows how the canvas would look , in relation to the overall bull pattern.

I am not quite happy with this plan for two reasons. First, I feel the narrower sides of the border are too narrow, proportionally, in relation to the wider sides. Secondly, I feel the middle square is too dominating, as I want the bulls to be of equal impact as the step pattern. I want to get away from the conventional idea of a border as something separate, as a picture frame, and therefore, of secondary importance to the main subject. So therefore, aesthetically, I want the subject in the middle to be of equal importance in the mind of the viewer. For this reason, I chose not to make the middle subject a figure, as in most people’s minds, a figure is a more important subject than a decorative border, and so I have chosen another kind of pattern to be the central panel. In this, I am following the inspiration of a page of the illuminated manuscript, The Book of Durrow, where the border of animals surrounds a square filled with a circle of knotwork, rather than a human figure or similar religious symbol. I have always liked the abstract unity of such designs, that balance abstract pattern with another kind of pattern. Secondly, I am not completely at ease with the length of the bull motif which is 7.5 inches in this layout. I would rather work with a whole number, that is what I had in mind at the beginning. So I wold like to find a better balance between the central square and the border, and a measuremet for the bull motif that will be more satisfying to work with. But apart from those reservations at this, I am happy with the overall effect as achieving my original intention, that being to produce a design which integrates the outer and the inner parts of the pattern, by means of the proprtions of each. I emphasise that quality of intelligibility, which means, in practical terms, that the overall pattern may be understood as a whole, its proportions may be calculated from the information contained on the surface, so that the viewer can see that the pattern of the bulls is of a certain proportion, and given the square of the step pattern as one inch, the outer edge of the rectangle may be calculated as three feet wide and six feet long. (These numbers are randomly selected, by the way. The client suggested the dimensions off the top of his head, and I took that as my starting point. The intelligibility of the pattern lies not in the measurement, but in the interplay of the proportion of rectangle and square, as related by the play of the proportion of the bull pattern, so that ten bulls of 3 inches width by four bulls of 7.5 inches height contain a square of 30 inches). This cannot be made by accident, it can only be got by planning, it is a kind of message in a bottle—or a symbol on a spacecraft sent out yonder, as evidence of human intelligence. A monkey can make a painting, but only human intelligence can design a pattern such as this.

Blog 2008 WEEK 40: 0928—1004

2008-10-04T03:08:00.000-07:00

Bull Design for a Leaded-glass Window

I am revising the bull drawing which I did this summer (2008 WEEK 30), to make it wider, while keeping the original length and the head and the spirals the same size, which means they have to be retraced onto the compressed image in order to reverse the distortion of those features caused by changing the bull’s proportion (from 1:3 to 2:5). When this is done, I will have a new window design, easier to build because the thinnest strips will be wider than an inch, and, by reversing the weaving of the tail and the switching position of the legs, I will have another design, which will go together with this one to make a painted panel of two dancing bulls intertwined. The variations can also serve as standalone windows, in a pair, or as a set, flanking the double panel, or triptych, as, for example, a room divider, or a panel in a front door, flanked by side windows. I am showing the bulls in the horizontal position, here, but the windows are intended to stand vertically, the bull rampant, as in heraldry. In this picture, you can see the shapes of the head and the spirals which have been copied from the original and pasted down over the compressed shape of the original body (as shown here in the darker shade of grey). The proportion of the first bull is 1: 3. The proportion of the second bull is 2: 5. The third bull has been traced from the second layout, so that it also is designed to fit the wider, 2:5 proportion, instead of the old 1:3 proportion. The reason for making it wider is so that it will be easier to cut the glass for the narrowest parts of the spirals and the tail. From this point in the development of the design, it will go through a series of redrawings, gradually changing one thing at a time, until the whole design will work as a cut-glass pattern. Already you can see the outline of the body is drawn with a broader contour than, say, the outlines for the spirals, and the secondary, internal contours: these two thickness are intended to translate into two thickness of lead came, in the fabrication of the window. The wider line will be 3/8ths and the narrower ¼ of an inch, in the final fullscale blueprint. The development will aim to simplify the fabrication process as much as possible, and also to simplify the design to a standard bull pattern, which I can introduce into the repertoire of Celtic animal patterns, in the form of an overall pattern, applied to the painting I am doing. For that, the design will need to be made smaller, and painted with a brush, instead of drawn with a pen, so that, for that reason also, it will need to be simplified. The first thing to chang will be the hoofs. I will eliminate the spurs, and the cleft. The revised bull will fulfill the client's requirements for a wider window design, and at the same time it will provide a starting point for the development of an overall pattern of dancing bulls. For this I will need to design at lest four variations of the same motif: two variations with limbs crossing and tails weaving in two directions, and two more with spirals turning in opposite directions. This variation has its right foreleg stretching forward, and its spirals turn outwards from the middle towards the right hindquarters. The tail passes under the hind leg. By reversing the weaving, the left foreleg must stretch forward, and the tail must pass over the hindmost leg, so that this will change the design completely. As well, by changing the direction of the spirals, the whole design must be rearranged for the spirals to interconnect, while connecting to the legs, in one position and another. A minimum of four variations is therefore needed to see all these possibilities, and all four vasriations can be best displayed in an overall pattern.

Blog 2008 WEEK 39: 0921—0927, Dancing Bulls Panel Layout and Step Pattern

2008-09-27T03:08:00.000-07:00

DANCING BULLS PANEL LAYOUT AND STEP PATTERN

Layout and Step Pattern

Notes written July 21, 2008

This notebook sketch (made on July 23, 2008) shows the plan for a top left quarter of an overall pattern which will cover a canvas 36" x 60", forming a border surrounding a 30"square. “I cannot use a 15" x 3" unit—this would not be suitable for a bull design such as the one I have in mind—it could be done with a long, skinny motif, such as the Hörning Dragon [see blog 2008 Week 18]—but that does not feel worth doing here. I would rather do the bull, reduced to a 7.5" x 3" unit instead of 15" x 16", which is the size I have now”. Caption below diagram: “This is a quarter panel—3" grid”. A repeating unit of 3 x 15 inches could be used, but that proportion—1:5—is longer and thinner than what I want here, which is a bull pattern which I designed earlier this year (blog 2008, week 30). But by dividing the length from 15 to 1.5, two smaller, half-sized bulls, could be fitted just as well into this layout. The diagram shows how the single bull could be placed on either side of the central square, and a double unit of two bulls could be repeated across the top. The single bulls will have to be designed separately, to allow them to interweave vertically, in contrast to the unit of two bulls, which would be woven horizontally as well.

THE STEP PATTERN

The note on the left page refers to a series of step patterns that I worked on throughout the spring of 2008. The construction is the same as for the article, but this is a different variation. This pattern is four tiles, with opposite corners mirroring each other. It turned out all right, but it was not what I had in mind, and I refer to the figure in the article as the idea I was trying to draw here (I shall post the article to my blog after it gets published, sometime in February 2009). “The step pattern I like best of the ones I wrote about is in my article is the 7th drawing of the 9 in figure 7a. “On the next page I draw the 28 x 28 step pattern. This can be seen as four quarter-squares with 14x14 patterns, alternating in the arrangement of their black andf white parts. This is not my preferred way to treat the design, I would rather repeat the 14x14 without reversing” [the shading, from quarter to quarter, that is].

Blog 2008 WEEK 38: Sep 14-Sep 20: Dancing Bulls

2008-09-20T01:25:00.000-07:00

DANCING BULLS PAINTING, SOME NOTES

These are some scanned images of some preliminary notes written June 18-23, for the painting I have been thinking about and talking over with friends since since March this year, though it follows from earlier work I have been doing over many years. The painting is to be an over-all Celtic animal pattern, like wallpaper with a square window dropped out of the middle forming a border, which in turn is to be filled by a step pattern. The overall pattern will be integrated so that the animals weave continuously around the empty square, the design being such that it allows a central square to be dropped out without disrupting the integrity of the overall pattern by varying the pattern to make it fit. Unity is a principle I wish to build into the design, as unity is a part of my idea of beauty, along with intelligible form, which in this case derives from a play of proportions, uniting the two incompatible shapes, the square, which is fixed, and the rectangle, which may have various proportions . The canvas is to be 36" x 60", so that will be an arbitrary condition imposed from the outset: I am looking for a pattern, therefore, that will fit that area, and fulfil the other aims just described.

The animal pattern is a bull motif currently being designed for a stained glass window. The bull does not have a precedent in the usual traditional sources for repeating patterns: sculptured stones, metalwork, or illuminated manuscripts from early medieval Britain. It must be created, preferably in a form that combines with existing animal patterns.

This note of June 18, 2008 poses the problem, "how to divide a rectangle of given proportion 3:5 into a grid so as to include a square in the middle?". The first diagram is a first stab in the dark, as far as the idea had gelled in my mind to that point. The second figure is a 3 x 5 grid divided into 12 x 20: as you see, a square window can be got out of this all right. The note refers to the 6 x 10 square grid, as follows. "Let these squares be six inches, then the area of the rectangle will be 3' x 5' (or 36" x 60"). "However this is unsatisfactory, since the side of the square [window] is 4, and the margin above and below is 3 deep. "If however the grid is further divided into 3" squares then the border will be 12x20. This would not alter the proportion of the repeat to other than the square grid.

"36/ 3 = 12 = units across.

"60 / 5 = 12 = units down.

I want a rectangular cell to fill area, other than the square tile." Which is to say, a repeating pattern of 6-inch squares is too boring. I want some other rectangle, one of of a proportion which will repeat over all, and allow a window to be dropped out. I have not decided what proportion yet that's one of the things these notes are supposed to help to figure out. Two 6" x 12" rectangles would fit the vertical sides of the 24" square here, but not the 18" border above and below the 24" square in the middle. In the third figure, however, the 12" square tile could be divided into 6" x 12" rectangles which would fit overall, leaving a square-foot window in the middle. But this is too small. The layout fills the bill technically, but fails esthetically: it needs to be a whole pattern with the middle dropped out as a picture frame round a picture, not a hole chopped out of a carpet.

After working on this for a few more sessions, later in the week I found that a 30" square could be dropped out of 36" x 60", where the repeating unit is 1/5 of the height (12") and 1/12 of the width (3")-that is, a 4 : 1 rectangle (I was mistaken here in noting that the repeating pattern is 3 x 10. It is 3 x 12).

This would work, but again it fails the good-taste test: it is a longer, thinner proportion than I want. I want a repeating pattern based on a wider proportion. I have seen these skinny beasties on some old manuscript pages-the Lichfield gospel book cross carpet page, for example, which look unpleasantly over-stretched, to my eye. The solution needs to come about through a blend of technical drawing and artistic judgement. Science without art is as bad as art without science.

On the second page I arrive at a more satisfactory-looking proportion of 6" x 15": two halves mirrored in each unit, make a 30" square drop-out. A repeating unit of 3" x 7.5"-or 5 : 2-is a good-looking proportion.

These notes explore a side road that interests me. I note that the octagon star, as I call it, subdivides the square in to 5 x 2. This is a handy method of dividing the square onto 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, and 9 squares (all the natural numbers between 1 and 10, except 7!). I derived this method from a clue I came across in Robert Lawlor's book, Sacred Geometry, where demonstrates Euclid's 47th proposition-Pythagoras' theorum-using only three lines to define the triangle on the second page. The clue he gave was that the floating apex divides the side of the square into 1/5. I expanded on this to produce the octagon star as a multiple grid generator, as outlined in my Celtic Design Book (Thames $ Hudson, 2007). I had not thought of this before now, but, as these notes show, the star can be used to divide a square into rectangles combining any of the divisions 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8 9-in this case, the star divides the square 5 across and 2 down, producing an overall pattern of rectangles. The proportion of each rectangle is 2x5. This is the pattern of the layout on the previous page, which fits a 30" square. "AB = 1/5. Project AB to cut perimeter of square at M. Project C,D to cut square at R Line XY cuts BM at O Line VW cuts DR at P Join OP and project to cut square att EF. EY = 1/10, FW = 1//10. This is the [proportional] width of the required motif." On the right-hand page just above is the demonstration of the Pythagoras' theorum, based on the diagonal of two squares, or root 5: that is, a line joining a corner to a midpoint of an opposite side. There are two sides opposite each corner; by joining each corner to two midpoints, you get the star containing. The next step is to design a motif to fit the proportion of 5/2 . Two bulls will fill 12 inches across and 15 inches down. This sketch is my starting point, as I have visualised it in my mind's eye over a period of a couple of months before putting pen to paper for the first time. I see these as dancing bulls, and so from here on I think of his painting as the Dancing Bulls Panel. However, it turns out that a repeating unit measuring 12" by 15" and containing 30" square produces an overall pattern of 42" x 60". If reduced to 30" x 60", then the inner quadrangle will be 24" x 30", instead of square. Back to the drawing board.

2008 WEEK 37: Sep 07—Sep 13: Hound and Heron

2008-09-13T13:01:00.000-07:00

HOUND AND HERON CARPET PAGE

I scanned some notes made for the next painting I have been planning since May, 2008: a dancing bull border with a square window dropped out of the middle, intending to insert a step pattern into the square. The panel is to be 3 feet wide by 5 feet high, or 36 x 60 inches. My plan starting out is to design an over all pattern that will allow a square window to be dropped out of it, without disturbing the pattern, or cutting through any of the repeating tiles, preserving its unity as a repeating pattern. A grid in which each unit is a 6 inch tile would contain a square of 4 x 4 tiles in the middle—or a 24” square—with a tile border all around, three rows above and below the middle square, and one column a single tile wide on either side. However, while the square cut out window would harmonise with the square tiles all right, the overall effect would be as boringly uniform as shower-stall tiling. I aim for a more interesting relationship, a repeating tile shaped as a rectangle, not a square, which will contain a square within it. And I want to present it so that you will be able to figure it out, just by looking at it, the construction should be that intelligible. I will explain what I mean by that later, but first I want to set up the backstory for the development of this painting. The idea grew out of a design I developed with a carpet page which I did some years ago, called the Hound and Heron Carpet Page design, a watercolour painting. Recently I looked at it again, and felt I would like to explore this kind of design further, as it is one of the most challenging and satisfying types of design I have done so far.

Here there are 16 repeats across and 12 down, around a central square of 12 across and 8 down. The repeat unit of a hound and a heron is 8 inches across by 12 down, or 2 : 3. This represents the point from which I want to start out now: applying the same design principle to fill an space of certain dimensions using a different proportion with an animal motif never applied before, and, by doing so, to extend the tradition.

If you look at the middle of the design you will see the repeating pattern on either side, framing the central square. The repeat consists of four units, four on either side. The unit is one that I have used before. Originally it was the basis of a large canvas called “Hound and Heron Panel, a detail of which was published as part of the cover design of my book, Celtic Design: Animal Patterns (Thames and Hudson, London, New York 1992:

In the original painting, these tiles—each containing one bird and one dog—measure 6 x 9 ins. They were reproduced photomechanically, and pasted onto prepared canvas using acrylic medium. The paper wrinkled in places, and when dry was glazed with colours and transparent gloss varnish in layers, then sanded down to remove the wrinkles, which, incidentally, produced a distressed apearance which looks like veins in marble.

At the time I was aiming for a build-up of layers sanded to a smooth surface, to look like glass, or enamel, which was once the main application for this sort of pattern in the early middle ages.

The multi-layered glazing technique was also used in the earliest painted works of the seventh and eighth centuries, so I am interested in carrying that technique to a new level, using acrylics on canvas and working on a large scale.

However, I was disapointed with the results of the paper print collage as a way to transfer the image, now I prefer to transfer the image by hand, as a more satisfactory method in every way, including convenience, as the collage process is not any more convenient in the long run.

Besides, the result is mechanical, which detracts from the directness of the painting technique, the effects of the colours being full of interest at every point, whereas the line image is all the same, except where the weaving was inprovised to connect the panels.

The hound and heron panel is made of four tiles mirrorred around a vertical and horizontal axis, so that the repeating pattern is really a combination of four tiles. The group is the same proportion as the single unit. Since the top half is the same as the bottom here, only rotated, the repeating uint is actually two of the four tiles, mirrored in relation to each other, but with the weaving reversed from tile to tile.

In making the carpet page, the same principle was applied, with the tile reproduced in multiple reductions, pasted down on a layout, and printed on a large sheet, using standard graphic design techniques. The advantage of this is that a great number of units can be laid out and reproduced on a single sheet of high-quality drafting vellum, which will not discolour or wrinkle with painting over. However, the result is not really suitable for painting on canvas, but is more suited to watercolour, which is how I chose to paint the carpet page.

With this in mind, I began the new carpet page with the intention of painitng it directly on the canvas, substituting a different animal, of different proportions, to find a way to make it both an overall pattern, and a frame surrounding a central square area. So these are some of my thoughts in setting out to produce a painting which would fulfill the principles of carpet page design developed in the Hound and Heron paintings, but using more direct methods, and more intelligible design methods.

2008 WEEK 36: Aug 31—Sep 06

2008-09-06T13:01:00.000-07:00

BULL IN BUSH PAINTING

After sanding, I gave the canvas four layers of transparent glaze, the third a grey glaze. The beauty of the glazing technique is that each successive coat of glaze, whether transparent or tinted, is removeable. I sanded the canvas again, giving it a more distressed look, taking off some of the overall grey glaze where it was too dark.

After sanding, a transparent glaze was applied all over with a 4 cm-wide soft nylon bristle brush. When that has dried overnight, it will be all set to touch up with transparent colours those patches stripped of paint in today's sanding.

The patch on the shoulder of the bull is now glazed again. Working on a big canvas, I like to use a long mahlstick —or maulstick, as it is sometimes spelled—that is, a long stick with a padded ball on one end. Bamboo makes a good stick, as it is springy. The uderside of the arm can roll on its own pad of elastic muscle to describe a controlled oval curve, using pressure and release, a technique picked up from calligraphy, and by rolling the mahlstick the movement can be extended without repositioning the arm. I find a chinese paintbrush is very good for these linds of strokes, where thicks and thins are called for. The springiness of the bristle absorbs any accidental trembling movements of the hand, and the brush can be rolled to keep a fine point for drawing fine lines, down to a hairsbreadth. The signature is written with white doc martin's ink mixed with tinned acrylic medium to ensure bonding with teh surface. I used a sharp pointed metal copperplate writing nib for this. The small letters are 3mm high. The finished painting.

2008 WEEK 35: Aug 24—Aug 30

2008-08-30T13:01:00.000-07:00

BULL IN BUSH MOVES AHEAD

A blue glaze over all the background moves it one step towards the goal of a solid field of deep blue. The blue is carried over the yellow to distinguish one branch of the tree. Red glaze turns the background indigo over the lapis lazuli blue background, also veils the yellow branch and the white body of the beast. Under yellow overhead lighting, it looks darker.

Photographed with a flash it looks colder and lighter. The blue background is deeper though not yet deep enough; one tendril has turned light red, other light blue green. After this two patches were rubbed off the body to give an effect of spots. Distressing the surface adds interest to the wide plain hind end. To rub the canvas hard without leaving it baggy, it needs to be taken off its stretcher bars and laid on a trestle table for support.

Afterwards, the surface was then glazed with a top coat, and left to cure, hung up on clothes pegs from an overhead wire to let dry without creasing where the large canvas hung over the edge of the table.

2008 WEEK 34: Aug 17—Aug 23

2008-08-17T13:01:00.000-07:00

BULL IN BUSH CANVAS IN PROGRESS

Here you see the painting in its second stage of the underpainting. Indian-red acrylic wash has been added over the yellow glaze background.

After the red paint has been allowed to dry to the touch, the red layer is scumbled over with transparent glaze of lapis lazuli pigment suspended in gloss varnish medium.

The successive layers of yellow, red and blue build up a depth of variegated hues, which when painted over add depths to subsequent layers of a more-opaque blue.

2008 WEEK 33: Aug 10—Aug 16

2008-08-10T13:01:00.000-07:00

BULL IN BUSH CANVAS

Last week I started drafting a painting based on the Kallunga viking design of a motif known as the Great Beasst, which I have dreamed of painting for over ten years. That beast is a stylised form of the lion, which I believe was the emblem of the royal house of Denmark. I like the idea of a great beast as an archetype of animal power and virility, but the royal lion does not seem particularly powerful as an image to me as it may once have been. However, a friend of mine recently had a run in with a bull, and I am working on the image of a bull for a stained glass window at the moment, so I have decided to substitute the bull as my own idea of the archetypal image of raw animal power. Having drafted the design on the canvas I first painted over the drawing with indian red acrylic, then painted tendrils yellow, added white high lights and glazed with more yellow. The liquitex web site says their products have a shelf life of five to seven years, provided they're stored at room temp. If subjected to high or freezing temperatures, or contaminated with dirty brushes or impure water, they may not last as long. Latex house paints aren't recommended as a basecoat as they have inferior pigments and mediums and will become brittle and yellow in time. If the base is covered with acrylic gesso, I don’t think yellowing base coat would matter. If the canvas is stretched, then brittleness is a problem, as brittle canvas will crack and break like old pulp paper, However, if the painting is done on a rigid panel, then brittleness is not a danger, either. As well, it depends in the thickness of the base coat. To prepare a canvas, apply two to five coats of acrylic gesso, sanding between coats. Once the painting is done allow three days curing time before coating with gloss medium and final varnish. Final varnish with Liquitex Soluvar Matte or Gloss. Soluvar is flexible and removable with mineral spirits, and is preferable tp polythene as a final varnish. Polyurethane is more durable but is not flexible or removable and will yellow. The use of Gloss Medium and Varnish under Soluvar is to protect the paint from abrasion during future Soluvar removal for cleaning. Soluvar final varnish provides UV protection, which preserves the colours of the paint. Various mediums can be mixed into paints to increase volume, and flexibility and adhesion of paint film, enhance colour intensity, ease flow. Matte mediums increase matte sheen. Gloss medium increases transparency of the colours. A thin film (1/16") take between 1/2 to 24 hours to dry. Thicker films (1/4") can take from two to five days. Using a hair dryer can speed up drying. Using a mister to increase humidity of the air will slow down drying. Some mediums can soften in hot, humid weather and stick to other surfaces, to prevent this, Soluvar is recommended as as a final protective coating.

2008 WEEK 32 Jul 27-Aug 09

2008-08-09T13:01:00.000-07:00

Made good progress on a painting—first coat on the large canvas. Subject one of the Viking Great Beasts, such as I drew from a design from a weather vane, the kind they used to mount on the prow of a long boat to tell the direction of the wind. These four pages from my book, Celtic Design: The Dragon and the Griffin, the sixth volume in my Celtic Design Series publishsed by Thames & Hudson (London and New York, 1995), deal with the Kallunga weather vane which is the inspiration for the painting I am now working on.

2008 WEEK 31 Jul 27-Aug 02

2008-08-02T01:01:00.000-07:00

CELTIC PATTERNS FOR PAINTING AND CRAFTS

Craft magazine editors asked me to send some addititional material relating to thearticle I wrote for them earlier this year, on step pattern design, to give them some idea of the historical context in which step patterns were used. I scanned some images from various sources, including these from my book, Celtic Patterns for Painting and Crafts, New York 1997, published by Thames & Hudson Inc.

The pattern above is a detail from the Frontispiece of that book, on page 6. The book was published simultanaeously under a different name in the U.K, by Thames & Hudson Ltd, London, as Celtic Patterns Painting Book (ISBN 0500279338). I drew this design using the computer, drawing the midlines as vector curves, and then adding a contour line. It is a slow way to do it, but the result can then be used in various ways more conveniently then a drawing, which has to be done over, whereas a computer generated image can be reused and replicated many times more easily. The chief advantage of vector line drawing is accurate layout and it mau be scaled larger or smaller without loss of detail, unlike a hand drawing, which as it is enlarged shows up irregularities in the lines due to the surface of the paper or hand trmour, which may pass unoticed at the original size, but not when enlarged.

This is another step pattern from the same book, page 7, this one a circular step pattern from the Lindisfarne Gospels, as recorded in Northumbria around the beginning of the eight century. Here is a third example of a step pattern from the Celtic Patterns Painting Book, page 21, those being all the illustrations featuring setp patterns in that collection.

2008 WEEK 30 Jul 20-Jul 26

2008-07-26T01:01:00.000-07:00

BULL PATTERN FOR LEADED WINDOW

I am revising this bull window design. The proportion here is 3:1, or 9:27. When we had the drawing enlarged to twice the size, we found that the proportions of the narrowest bands, such as the tail, and spiral coils were too thin. The plan now is to adapt the design to a wider proportion, which will allow more room for the narrowest parts. Instead of 3:1, I am redoing the bull to a proportion of 3: 2, as a 6 x 15 in (25 x 38 cms) drawing.

2008 WEEK 29: Jul 13—Jul 19

2008-07-19T12:25:00.000-07:00

WEDDING GUEST NAME CARDS, FINISHED SAMPLES

These are some of the name cards finished this week for a wedding reception. Each card with the name is placed on the table at the wedding banquet, so that each guest will know where to sit.

2008 WEEK 28: Jul 06—Jul 12

2008-07-12T12:25:00.000-07:00

WEDDING CALLIGRAPHY

Wedding placecards written with Zanerian Fine Writer steel nib in oblique pen holder, and copperas ink.

2008 WEEK 27: Jun 29—Jul 05

2008-07-05T00:25:00.000-07:00

WEDDING ENVELOPE

Bride-to-be came by with girlfriend, thought my studio looked Harry-Potteresque. Here they are checking the envelopes for miss-spelled names, those are goose quills on the drafting table in the foreground.

Angelique and Sandi visit my Harry-Potteresque studio

I scanned this sample of a wedding invitation envelope to send the bride-to-be. I am working on about a hundred of these at present. It is written with a Canada Goose Quill and copperas ink which I made myself from an old recipe.

Figure 1: a sample invitation envelope written with goose quill

2008 WEEK 26: Jun 22—Jun 28

2008-06-28T00:24:00.000-07:00

Payson, Dunton, and Scribner’s Handbook 1881

Payson, Dunton, and Scribner’s Handbook for Teachers of their System of Penmanship (1881 revision of 1867 edition) has different plates from the 1862 edition (posted on Blog 2008 Week 25), off-set-lithographed rather than engraved, which reproduce better. This copy was printed in 1881, but the plates date from 1867.

The writing is only slightly less florid than those of the ‘fifties-style 1862 edition, and is outdated for ‘eighties, given that modern business writing—such as the Palmer Method, launched in 1884—was becoming standard.

Fig. A:

Payson, Dunton & Scribner’s National System of Penmanship, 1881, cover Fig B: Plate 1: Analyses and Classification of Letters, PD&S Handbook,1867 (reprint 1881, page 14) Fig C: MOVEMENT EXERCISES

PDS Handbook 1867, reprint 1881, page 10

These popular movement exercises were reproduced in negative, white on black, but are inverted here as being easier to read. The small letters are intended to be written 1/8 inch, or 3 mm high

Fig D: MOVEMENT EXERCISES [Movement exercises 29-35 for stems of capitals]

2008 WEEK 25: Jun 15—Jun 21

2008-06-21T00:24:00.000-07:00

PAYSON, DUNTON & SCRIBNER’S MANUAL OF PENMANSHIP

Fig. A: Cover of Payson, Dunton & Scribner’s Manual of Penmanship, Boston 1862

The figure in the illustration on the cover(Fig. A) is repeated on frontispiece to the book showing the Position of the Hand and Pen, (Figs B1, B2) with special emphasis on the Rolling Rest, that is hand writing powered by the movement of the forearm rolling on the muscle pad extending from two inches below the elbow to half-way along the forearm. This is followed by Pl.1, Elements and Principles of Letters (Fig. C1, below); Pl. 2, Analysis of the Letters, (Fig. C2); pl.3, Variety of Terminations and Shades in Principles 7, 8 & 9 (Fig. D1).

Fig. B1

A. Plate 1 Place the end of the holder against the side of the middle finger just below the nail B. Place holder across first finger between second and third joints C. Place end of thumb near right corner of nail against holder opposite first joint of middle finger D. The Rolling Rest of arm on the muscle in front of the elbow E. The Sliding Rest on corners of the nails of the third and fourth fingers bent under F. Wrist and hand must not rest on the desk or book

Fig. B1

Fig. C Elements and Principles of letters (P.D.&S., p.56) Fig. C2:

Pl. 2, Analysis of the Letters (P.D.&S., p.57) Fig. D1:

pl.3, Variety of Terminations and Shades in Principles 7, 8 & 9 (P.D.&S., p.64)

The copy I received also contained the bonus of a small envelope engraved with the name of the publisher, in case to want to send it with a request for a catalogue of their other publications. The main address has some fine examples of off-hand capitals.

Fig. E: Small envelope engraved with the name of Payson, Dunton and Scribner’s publishers (Crosby and Ainsworth, 117 Washington St., Boston, Mass.)