For the Grads

I was asked by our school to make illuminated manuscript-style bookmarks for those graduating from high school. Each was to be unique. Included in the design would be each student's individual interests. Let's not talk about how creative I had to be with depicting some of them in illustrated form.  I couldn't have done it without the suggestions of some really great people- you know who you are, so thank you!


     I decided to make three different designs for the boys and three for the girls. The boys would all be done with knot work and Celtic style elements, and the girls would be inspired by Gothic manuscripts. This gave me a basic template to add the interests to.
     Each bookmark was transferred from my master drawing, inked, filled in with yellow gold, gold, copper or silver ink; painted with color, inked again, filled in with metallic color, and painted with tiny details (mostly dots). As a final touch, the name of each new owner was written on the back in gothic script.
     Having a base design allowed me to change up not only the colors, but some of the shapes within each bookmark for similar but still unique looks for each student. I tried to keep to traditional color schemes I'd seen in the a lot of the manuscripts I had my students study this year. Even though some of them look more contemporary, they are actually pretty old school! I mixed up so many various shades of blue, purple, green... it doesn't look like it in the photo, but they are actually all slightly different and looked even more so on paper.

 These are the Boys' Whorls:


These are the Boys' Trinity/Snake Knots:


The Boys' Key Patterns:



The Girls' Spanish Hebrew Leaves:

The bookmark on the left is special because I took actual footage of her playing the violin at the Fine Arts Festival and drew her based on that. 

The Girls' English Gothic Trefoil Leaves:



The Girls' Architecture/Italian Florals:

I love all the tiny highlights and dots. The little details are probably my favorite parts.

*Note: These are just the names I gave the styles for identification purposes when assigning designs to interests, not necessarily official titles.

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