 
Illumination - adding decoration to book manuscripts - dates back to the early 5th century, and continued into the Middle Ages, when monks and other artists used colored pigments, as well as gold and silver leaf, to decorate the pages of Bibles.Skilled artists were able to beautify the pages of the Bible as a way to summarize and preserve its message. Monks would spend long hours hand-copying the Scriptures onto parchment or thin sheets of animal skins. Often they were unable to read the text they were copying. Then they would embellish it with art. Illumination can still be found in modern printed Bibles, as well as in many other examples of the written word, including childrens' books. We're going to try illumination as an exercise in art. You can illuminate a favourite Bible verse, a poem you are fond of, a prayer, lyrics from your favourite song, or any piece of writing you want. Sometimes the illuminaton is just the first letter of the passage. But you can also add other images too. It can be done in pencil and inked afterwards, and coloured too if you want. First you'll need to find a piece of writing that you want to illuminate, and print a copy. (The poetry link above, for example, leads to a page with some famous poems). Then you'll want to copy it by hand onto a clean sheet of drawing paper. (Alternately, you can print it in Word using a fancy font, and sized to leave room for your illustration). After that it's up to you. Often people who try this embellish the writing with images that pertain to the piece. But you can also draw images that are meaningful to you. Here are some examples made by high school students in my Art 10 class, to give you some ideas. They're not enlaged because the words aren't necessarily important to you ... it's the way they were illustrated that we're interested in. 
 The second example above includes a basketball player! 
 I think that writing them out by hand makes them much more personal, even if the writing isn't perfect.  I made an exception for this one; click on it and it will enlarge. (click on it again to shrink it) This is my favourite Bible verse, and an incredible example of poetry! |