The Saga of Psalm 19

Where do I start?
Probably one of the most difficult Psalms for me to illustrate, it literally took me weeks to conceive, create, recreate, revise, redraw, and finally get happy. Then I made the mistake of asking others what they thought of the design! So, more drawing, designing, etc.....

This was the final design below I decided to go with,but as you can see, many areas were totally undecided.

Then came the decision, how do I carve this dreamscape?

I think I wound up redrawing the lines about5 times before I even came close to figuring out
how I wanted to carve.(I always attempt to draw my images in pen as I
plan carve them in wood).

Here is the idea and final image side by side:

On to the illumination!

I really had fun with the designing of this motif! I will just go ahead and show you the designs of the decorative initial and illumination and let you decide if it works:








And here is the final image:As always, comments are appreciated and they let me know someone is actually looking at this stuff.

A Review So Far

I realized recently that some of the nice people I meet and send here either don't know or realize that my prints are organized by dates. So, I thought it would be nice and the right time to do a review.

So, here they are so far, Psalm 1 through Psalm 18.
Click on any image and it will take you to the full post for details and the full Illuminated Psalm.












So this is it so far..............

Please leave your comments!

Stay tuned, updates coming soon.

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 illuminations:


Page 1








Page 2




And the final images:
Hope you enjoyed!