T H E S T O R Y
The date is September 14, 2015. It is late morning, 11:00 to be precise, and I have walked into Room 105 at Anderson Hall for my first class at the Savannah College of Art and Design. The class is Design 100, and I couldn't be more excited.
Flash-forward a week or two and I am already neck-deep in work for my other two courses, but this particular class still holds captive most of my attention. The current assignment is to take an animal silhouette and fill it with a repetitive design of some sort, using our textbook as a resource. It's this small, squarish, inch-and-a-half-thick hardcover coffee-table book called “Designa”, and within its pages is an entire section on Celtic pattern.
Celtic pattern consists of intricate weaving, rambling lines, and orderly spirals that spin their ways into the design. I'm immediately stricken by how intense the Celts were with their patterns, and, although I know it's essentially a deathwish, I decide to fill the silhouette of a trophy stag with crosshatched Celtic knots. The next 40-something hours of work are something that my wrist will never forgive me for, but the final product turned out better than I ever could have planned it to be.
“Celtic Pattern Deer Silhouette”
October 2015
23" x 29"
Pen & Ink on Bristol
October 2015
23" x 29"
Pen & Ink on Bristol
D E T A I L S
I decided to use crosshatching in the dark areas of the Celtic knots in order to create more texture and visual interest in the piece. It's also worth noting that in “Designa”, it is stated that the Celts used triple basket hatching on their metalwork for the same reason, hence why I chose to put myself through the torture of crosshatching a 23 x 29 inch drawing.
P R O C E S S
A series of iPhone shots detailing the progression of my work on this piece, which, in all, took about 42 hours.
