I loved art class as a kid, and that was the one nice thing about that freshman year of high school hell was having an 80 minute block to work in projects with a teacher who gave us assignments that were cool enough that I saved almost all the pieces I did that year, even if in a moment of post-Columbine paranoia she sent me to the guidance counselor due to my antisocial tendencies, strange musical preferences, morbid subject matter, and the cat scratches on my arm that were obviously a cry for help/suicide attempt.
Still, that classroom was a refuge, because I could lose myself for an hour and a half, experimenting with india ink and forging a lifelong brand loyalty to Prismacolor pencils (used heavily on black paper of course), a love of carving linocuts, and having way too much fun with scratchboard, which is what these remind me of.
The process involved staining the pages of vellum black and then painting over them, which hasn't always aged too well, but looks swanky nonetheless and is a nice stylistic change from the usual.
Images courtesy of Tumblr via the Morgan Library...
These last three are from a facsimile of the one owned by Charles the Bold.
So this is what you've got stashed in your Unabomber cabin.
ReplyDeleteI think over Trustee-approved vacation I should start work on an illuminated black manuscript.