You are going to to design a page from an illuminated ...



St. Brendan illuminated manuscript project

You are going to to design a page for an illuminated manuscript. The teacher will show ou some examples of manusccripts done by former students.You are going to choose a St. Brendan story—sign up with the teacher. Then choose a sentence (or sentences) from that story that you are going to write out by hand on the paper with a blue grid.

Day 1

1. PENCIL!! First (today) you are going to a draw a square (use a straight-edge!) that is 16 by 16 squares on the gridded paper. You should leave two rows of square blank at the top of the page and two on the left of the page. Then you are going to design the first letter of the sentence to fit in the square. Use the letter patterns provided to give as a guide. This should be dark enough to copy well. Although you will go over it in black again before you hand in the project.

2. PENCIL!! Once you have drawn the initial letter, you can write in the rest of the sentence (or sentences) until you have nicely filled-in the page. Don’t worry whether your sentence is finished when you reach the end of the page.

Try to do as good a job with your writing as you can at this point, even though you will have an opportunity to darken the letters later.

3. Tonight you should go to Google and under “images” look for “historiated”. You will get a number of pictures of medieval manuscripts that a show examples of what you are going to do. You can also look at other sites or museums on the web (esp. getty.edu/museum) but you will have to look for a section on manuscripts, then a subsection on illuminated or illustrated texts—and even then you may just get pictures rather than historiated initials. It might be helpful to download a few of the examples and bring them to class tomorrow.

Day 2

4. PENCIL!! You are then going to historiate your letter, i.e., design a picture inside the letter (or at least inside the box that contains the letter) a picture that represents some part of the story that you have chosen. There cannot be more than three squares in a row without some decorative element. Crowded is o.k.

5. When you have

1. drawn the box,

2. put the letter in the box,

3. written (or printed) the rest of the sentence to fill up the page,

4. drawn the main outline of your picture,

Then give your page to the teacher who will bring it back the next day copied onto nice parchment-like paper. If you would like to go over your work in a darker pencil of pen before you hand it in to be copied, that is o.k.

Day 3.

At that point you will take the paper home and color in the letter and the illustrations. You can use ink, paints, chalk, crayons, whatever you feel most comfortable with. Please do not discard you original paper until you have finished the final piece, since you may want to consult it or even start again.

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