Thursday, March 11, 2010

Psalm 18


By far, one of the easiest images to create and one of the hardest to illuminate!

This is also one of my favorite images I have created. The verses virtually sang to me the imagery. I wanted to depict God saving me from the "pit" and the "cords" that attempt to hold me down.

I am not totally satisfied with the cross-hatching, maybe at some later date I will go back and thin out more lines to help with the shading, or maybe I will leave it be, because the arm is being rescued from below where it is not all smooth and nice.

Again, printed with Graphic Chemical black on Zerkal book vellum
(which I found out is hand made in Germany). Carved in lino, mainly with an exacto knife (although my U gauge and V gauge are getting lonely.

The decorative initial was easy enough:

Once again going retro, I decided to do everything
in India ink and brown ink. I didn't add any other
colors because I was very satisfied with the way
the image looked as is.

Also, I had in the back of mind what the final
product would look like once the illumination
was completed. The main problem was yet to
come; how was I going to fit all the text
on one piece of paper?

After much consideration, and 5 trial runs of writing the Psalm out, in calligraphy form, I decided that unless people were going to look at this with a magnifying glass, it would never all fit on one piece of paper.

Rather than prattle on, here are the final illumination
s:


Page 1








Page 2




And the final images:
Hope you enjoyed!