I’ll be honest- I usually have a little trouble keeping my eyes open during the first few minutes of class at 8:30am on Mondays and Wednesdays. It isn’t because I’m not interested, I am just not operating on all cylinders quite yet.
However, this Wednesday was totally different. We had such a nice and relaxed set up, with food and paints and even music. I started planning out my letter, and was soon totally absorbed in the activity. I don’t think I looked up from my project once during class. I got in a real rhythm while retracing my lines and listening to the Gregorian chants. I found myself wishing we had more time to finish the letters when class was over. I left class feeling totally energized and ready for the rest of the day.
I think our little scriptorium was therapeutic in that it made me slow down and realize that having time to something like draw and paint is really relaxing. It also made me appreciate even more the historated letters we’ve been looking at in class. The detail and concentration that they require is truly impressive. Looking around at all the letters we made in class, I was struck by how differently each person addressed the assignment. I am really excited to see what everyone does for the larger assignment. Maybe we should have a scriptorium every Wednesday???
Yes, let’s start Scriptorium Wednesdays! I felt exactly the same way, like the class flew by too quickly and I could have worked all day on my letter. I agree that the detail we’ve seen in class is insanely impressive, seeing as my letter was pretty big and didn’t have that many details and I still thought it was hard. It’s so cool how many little objects, animals, etc. you find in historiated letters that probably require so much precision and focus.