Knot So Fast Buster!

A good place to start telling a story is in the middle. I put this Celtic knot picture in a previous post as an example of a drawing I'd made using the 53 Paper app. on my iPad. It started as a doodle, a warm-up for some other sketches in a proper paper sketchbook, but I reworked it after drawing more of the same with pencils, coloured pencils and watercolour.

Decisions I made while using physical media influencing decisions about the digital image. Using the eraser a lot - much easier in the digital context, though in the 53 Paper app. there is only a hard eraser whereas a real eraser can be more subtle. Real paper can only withstand a certain amount of scrubbing but a digital eraser can rub out as many times as you like.

I like the effect of layering colours you get with coloured pencils, the way you can see the granular texture of the colours in the previous layers. I tried it in the digital image and achieved a fair approximation. A pleasant effect, better than flat colour. Using the pencil tool to draw the thick outlines was useful as I could over draw lines to make them stronger or ease back on others - more like a real pencil and less digital looking than using the pen or marker tool to give a solid line.

Overlaying watercolour glazes creates some interesting effects but nothing like real watercolour.

Here's a page from my sketchbook with the same design drawn with non photo blue pencil - to establish the design - overdrawn with a 0.5 mm mechanical pencil then coloured with Derwent Studio coloured pencils.

The design below has been outlined with black ink.

Finally, a more worked up version done with a combination of watercolour and coloured pencil on Fabriano Accademia Desegno e Acquarello 240 gsm natural grain paper - which is very absorbent for a paper that declares itself suitable for watercolour, though you can achieve some interesting effects once you get used to it.

The absorbency of the paper exaggerates the way watercolours dry lighter than they appear when they're wet. Some colours appear very dark when wet but almost disappear when they dry.

So, how did I get here? I was marvelling at The Book of Kells on my iPad - get it in the AppStore for the price of an average bottle of wine, you'll be enjoying it long after the wine has gone.

You should go into advertising copywriting - back in the '50s Awa Rich!

I was wondering where you'd got to.

Same here Awa Rich. I was beginning to think you'd abandoned me.

I've been fascinated by Celtic knotwork since I was a kid. My brother Nick and I went through a phase of filling any available piece of paper with intricate designs we called 'creepers' like the tendrils on a pea vine. We'd discovered fractal self similarity, though we didn't know it at the time.

A prize with no bells on it for you Awa Rich!

This made for fertile ground when I got a book about the Vikings from a 'book of the month club'. It had some knotwork design on the cover and/or there were photographs of wood or stone carvings inside. This is all fogged by the passage of time.

That's my version of the story. Nick might remember it differently.

It was Nick that took knotwork as his own thing, beginning with the dust jacket of the Vikings book. The original must have been pretty boring as he replaced it with his own design. From then on, any available surface was fair game. Take a look at his website, there's a link over there on the right.

The design in the image at the top of this post was copied from a small pendant on a troll in a Brian Froud illustration.

All this because I was scratching around some designs for a logo or monogram for my sketchbooks. Actually, a seal to replace the bead on the end of the bookmark ribbon.

Is that the future feature Awa Rich?

One of them, yes.