Greetings!

In January I decided to make a break from drawing for a while. After six years of continuous calligraphy/drawing in a Celtic style I felt a little bit of burn out. I decide to take a month-long break and learn to make book boxes. Well, eight months later and that break is finally over. As per my last update I’ve started to make Celtic-style Tengwar greeting cards!

I’ve decided to make the greeting cards, a whole range of them – birthdays, anniversaries etc., and I will look to make these available on my Inprnt or Redbubble stores when I have a set completed.

I’ve decided to start with a ‘Thank You’ card, namely because I would like to send one each to my first two members as a tiny token of appreciation. I’ve spent a week designing this one and now I’m at the stage where I’m nearly finished the line-work.

Design

Quick Preliminary Sketches.

A slightly more detailed sketch of the design I chose to explore.

Major Elements

I started with a 7:4 rectangle (sub-divided into a 28 x 16 grid). From this I built a frame 2 units wide all the way around. I put in the two circles touching at the exact centre of the page with equal diameters going all the way to the right and left edges of the page, these would become the bows of the Thule (th) and Quesse (k) of Thank. The ascender and descender of each would form part of the frame of the picture so I just used the 2-unit width that I had assign to the border as the width of the stems and worked the inside of the bows from this.  I then used these measurements to create the Anna (Y of you) and placed it on the vertical midline resting on the bottom of the frame, the Ure and Tehtar then fell into place within the Anna perfectly.

The Details

I decided (after a discussion with my wife) to place the ‘A’ tehtar and the Numen (N) inside the bow of the Quesse rather than on top to reduce confusion, she thought that it could be read ANTHK as opposed to THANK if left on top.

I decided to keep the decorative knots on the top of the ascender and descender very similar to maintain a diagonal symmetry, and a spiral at the end of the bow of the Thule which will come out to fill the whole inside of the bow with a dog’s head (sure why not?).

For a bit more interest I decided the Anna would not rest on the bottom frame but that due to social distancing the top of the border would be forced down, away from it - constricting itself, and twisting around itself as it moves to the right of the page. You can see here that social distancing meant that I had to erase part of this ‘twist’ to keep the frame away from the knot decor at the end of the Quesse descender and also that I was still toying with the idea of the Numen (the two smaller joined circles) above the Quesse.

I decided to keep the parts of the border that remain simple and interesting by leaving out a lot of the smaller frames that would usually divide it into smaller spaces. The upper right hand corner mirrors the lower left and a little adjustment to the decoration on the lowest part of the Quesse descender.

I’ve added the dog’s head, a step-pattern background around the ‘AN’ inside the Quesse. I’ve also got the grid for the knotwork and key-patterns in the large Tengwar and the border, and started working on the spirals which will fill all the blank space around them.  

Step-pattern background.

The altered ascender decoration.

The dog’s head

Knotwork grid.

Knotwork outline.

Pencilled spiral fill.

My Thoughts So Far.

Theres a lot about this that I really like. However, there are somethings that I’m so unhappy with that I’ve a good feeling that I’ll be doing it again (much of this unhappiness developed as I was reviewing these pictures to make this post).

Things I’ll change:

1. I should not have listened to the ‘expert’ – I can see from the photo that the Numen would look well above the Quesse and read perfectly too!

2. I think that there’s far too much empty space ‘up top’, even if I put the Numen here it’ll still look too empty, to remedy this I’ll lower the upper part of the frame by 2-3 units, I’ll do this by removing the square box. I can fill in the space that remains with some rubrication.

3. I’m not happy with the decoration at the end of the Quesse descender, I think an exact mirror of the one on the Thule ascender works better, but I’ll keep working on something even better than that.

4. The dog’s head…maybe a bird would be better.

I’m glad I’ve had an extended break from this. I feel so refreshed and raring to go!

Thank you again for your support. I love it.

Mick.