Month: February 2017

As evidenced by Gustave Doré’s works that we looked at in class today, an artist depicting scenes from Don Quixote has to constantly consider how to represent the dichotomy of the protagonist’s imagination and reality. The two works below tackle this challenge. The first one, a visual from Terry Gilliam’s film, “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote,” shows the scene in which Don Quixote believes that the windmills are giants who he must defeat. The artist chooses to portray Don Quixote’s imagination as contemporaneous with and equivalent to his reality, including his envisioned identity as a knight. He makes Don Quixote’s confusion viable by giving the giant certain characteristics that closely resemble a windmill. While he does give credence to these ideas, the background of the painting also reveals the differing reality of the situation by showing windmills without giants.

The second illustration, by Daniel Torres, displays a shadow that embodies Don Quixote’s idealistic self-image as a confident knight with armor and a sword. His real identity in the world is depicted as a disadvantaged man wearing ratty clothing and sitting atop an animal that more closely resembles a donkey. This version of the protagonist looks out into the world of the viewer, shielding his eyes from the sun, as if preparing to confidently encounter the reality of his world with an imagination that contradicts it.

I absolutely loved having the opportunity to workshop and attempt to make my own historiated letter. It really put all of our discussions of illuminated manuscripts into perspective when I realized the time and detail that went into a single letter, much less an entire illustration. It is such an involved process that much is left to the discretion of the illuminator. What struck me the most was the experience of applying the gold leaf. The process required a great deal more precision than I had anticipated but really transformed the entire work immediately. I was able to pick up the illustration and move it to see the light reflect off the gold leaf and it reminded me again of the movie The Secret of Kells in which the entire movie had been drawn in the style of illustrations come to life. The workshop has given me an entirely new appreciation for illuminated manuscripts–I could not imagine illuminating an entire manuscript, much less in the scale of the Book of Kells or the one of the pocket prayer books. Especially with the knowledge that the illuminators of the past would have been illustrating on parchment without the technologies like electricity.

Working on our own historiated letters in the scriptorium workshop for the last few classes has been a great experience. It has been fun while also making apparent just how much effort goes into a single letter of a manuscript. After this exercise, I can’t even imagine how long it would take and how much patience you would need to illuminate an entire book, especially since our letters were on a much larger scale than they would be in a manuscript, which made the detail work easier. While working on my own letter, I also saw a connection to the idea of style brought up in in Pamuk’s My Name is Red. I tried to combine my own geometric style with more traditional nature-inspired designs for my letter. In the novel, certain characters, like Enishte Effendi, assert that new styles can emerge from combining pre-existing methods of illumination. He says that  even workshops can develop their own styles, which emerge from the individual techniques of each of the illuminators building off of one another and combining with the style of the old masters. However, in some passages of the novel, the characters wonder whether it is really possible to combine two different styles. According to Master Osman, the combination of Eastern and Western art in Enishte’s manuscript results only in illuminations that reflect less skill than those created using only one style. To what extent can you keep your own style while taking influence from other artists?

Two days in the scriptorium workshop really opened my eyes to the art of illustration. One thing that struck me was the time and planning that went into making a simple letter. It took me about 45 minutes of the first class just to map out where I wanted to place everything and getting my letter “M” to be symmetrical. Even just thinking about how I wanted to decorate my letter took a while. It made me realize how even the smallest distorted letter at the beginning of a page takes so much thought, planning, and execution of details. The second class, I was able to finish my illustration and begin the process of illumination. Deciding on which part of my illustration to illuminate was also a difficult choice. I wanted to use gold leaf in a relatively big area that was easier to put glue on, rather than any tiny details. I decided to do two concentric frames around my letter. Using the gold leaf really made my image come alive, and it was easy to see the appeal of using it in early manuscripts to make illustrations even more beautiful.  Overall,  my experience in the scriptorium was super enjoyable, and I loved engaging in an ancient art that proved way more difficult, detailed, and time consuming than I would ever have guessed.

Painting is not my strong suite; I’ve made some large abstracts in the past, but when it comes to intricate small scale drawing, it can be a mess. In class today I saw first hand the intricate detail and skill level, as well as the time and patience required to create beautiful and perfected drawings for manuscript. I began by making a historiated letter “R” and then trying to add a dragon next to it, which didn’t work out like I had hoped. However, I was intrigued by the juxtaposition of ideas in both the Book of Kells and My Name is Red. On one hand, My Name is Red can be interpreted as a Western text – although the illuminators at the time had to balance a fine line of drawing what the knew or saw, and avoiding creating idolatry – which would be sinful. Compared to the Chi Rho page in the Book of Kells, their idea of how their savior should be represented and revered is quite different: The Chi Rho page, as exemplified in the film we watched about Kells, is a wonderfully crafted and designed page, with the goal to awe and inspire the reader. I have been thinking about the comparisons between My Name is Red and Kells for a while now, so perhaps that may be the basis for my first essay. I was also very intrigued by the mixing of paint today, and it gave me a deep respect for the patience it took to set up painting – for I can imagine the mixing and creation of the paints would be quite an arduous process. It was heartening to see that the ancient art of creating paint for manuscripts is not lost even in the world of technology.

I found today’s lesson of how the many generations before us created paint fascinating. It became apparent to me that it was quite the long process that people had to go through in order to get their desired product. While we saw an abbreviated version of this, it is easy to see why this process would take weeks many centuries ago. When I was grinding the paint together with Christian, he told me that the cavemen would grind their pant on their cave’s walls. This was surely a more time consuming and less productive method of creating paint in comparison to what we saw and did today. Learning the history of how this paint was created throughout history gave me a greater appreciation for how readily available it is today for our usage!

After learning about illuminated manuscripts and the processes involved in their creation in class for the past few weeks, it was great to be able to sit down and gain some hands on experience in the field. I spent time working with my group on our collaborative illustration, working on creating my own illuminated letter, and mixing the paint with Mr. Goodwillie. Albeit my artistic capabilities are certainly limited, to put it mildly, I still enjoyed spending time creating the illuminated letter. I found it to be challenging but certainly interesting and rewarding as well.

What I enjoyed the most however was mixing the paint. It was something entirely new to me, and I gained an appreciation for just how hard these artists must’ve worked to illuminate the manuscripts we’ve been studying. Aside from the talent that it requires, the sheer amount of time that must be spent preparing the tools required to illuminate is worthy of praise on its own. I couldn’t imagine having to sit down and mix the amount of paint that must’ve been required to illuminate the images in an entire text.

All in all I found the experience to be thoroughly enjoyable as well as educational. I appreciated having the opportunity to experience first hand the processes of artistic expression that we have been studying for the past few weeks.

I found today’s exercise to be extremely enjoyable, but it was also a great hands on exercise to review what we have been learning so far in class.  I feel like having the opportunity to actually complete something after we have learned about it helped put into perspective what the illuminators did in the Middle Ages.  When I sat down and decided that I was going to create a C, I also thought about what story I was going to tell through my illumination.  A historiated letter is more than just a decorated letter in a book, but it also offers a picture that describes a scene.  So I decided to based my image off of my name and my story.  I included fragments from my family’s crest in the decoration, as well as a rose for my middle name.  As I was channeling my inner patron/illuminator, I understood how these illuminators would depict what was important to the patrons.  It was a fun exercise that really opened my eyes up to the world of illuminating from making the paints to telling a story through images.

What was your major takeaway from this experience, and what inspired your illumination?

I had a great time in the scriptorium workshop today– what a way to start a morning!

I think it was worth more than my own entertainment, though. I ended up working on a historiated letter, trying to combine a few historical examples to come up with one I really loved, that was both interesting and traditional, both intricate and feasible. With this experience I think I have a better understanding of medieval scribes’ environment. They placed a lot of importance on copying and otherwise maintaining traditions of their craft. Still, look at the variety and expression we see in even the fraction of their work we can still see today! They knew how to fix and match, and that’s a part of what we learned today in the scriptorium.

On a more concrete note, we also got a lot of hands-on experience mixing paints, sketching, and inking that brought us closer to the scribes we’re studying. We faced questions like “how do I make this T symmetrical?” and “what do I do now that the muller is stuck again?” that force you to put more thought into the process of an illuminated manuscript than you might just looking at one for content.