Celtic knots for Kylian
I painted this birth announcement for a baby boy.
His name is Kylian – a variation of the Irish “Cillian” –a medieval saint’s name meaning “little church”. So I took many hours investigating weird paths. Stained glass windows? Cathedral architecture? Reliquaries for skulls? (My beloved told me No.)
Until my brain said BOOK OF KELLS and I went and spent several hours studying and painting designs based on the Book of Kells.
So here is my first journey into this joy. Tiny animals everywhere you look!
I work in Photoshop and Illustrator – so it’s digital, but more or less handpainted as you can tell. The dots were a challenge for my hands so I had to take breaks and come back to them a few times.
There is something doodly about carving little beasts, so it became more and more playful.
Apart from the questionable diet and the Viking raids, I think I could have spent another life in perfect contentment as a monk, illustrating manuscripts.
And we made a stamp, too! This was such a wonderful project to work on.
This was my sketch sheet to study letters.
