Borders for Scripture and Letters

Somethimes I am compelled to take one drawing and turn it into a border that I can use for illuminated Scripture, but I also use them for love letters to my wife. On average I write her two letters a week, and having a pretty border makes it that much more meaningful to her.

I drew a large flower, and the contrast was pleasureable, so I repeated around the page.

Intensity

While most of my doodles leave plenty of white space, I got the idea to cover a page. I remembered a picture I had (may still have somewhere) of some primroses. Every spot that wasn't flowers was leaves. So I decided to replicate it (except the picture had purple flowers, and the leaves were a darker green). The effort above took about eight hours of effort, but it has drawn more comments than the usual. Because of that, I will probably do more of these - different colored flowers, different sizes, etc.

YOU can do this. Look at it. All it is is a bunch of lines. The flowers aren't symmetrical - not as good as God does day in and day out all over the globe; the leaves are irregular; the shading doesn't always go to the boundary line, or sometimes it goes past. Those things don't matter. You can create something similar by getting one or two basic shapes down and just shading them in, over and over and over again. I'd love to see what you come up with. I'd especially love to see something quite different that uses the same basic concept of repeated pattern. Send me a link to your drawing; send it to RickHolmanArt@yahoo.com

Chalk Boards

My children are sooooo deprived!

When I was young, we didn't have white boards. At home we didn't have anything that we could erase (except pencil on paper). At school we had chalk boards. These were mostly deep, dark green, but some were black. They had a slightly rough texture - just enough that running your fingernails over them produced an extremely annoying sound that drove most teachers crazy. For some unknown reason, this noise affected few, if any, of the boys. You can't get that sound out of a white board.

Just like a white board, though, when you were done, you had to erase the chalk board. Unlike the white board, erasing the chalk board produced a large amount of chalk dust. After only a few uses of the eraser, it was so full of chalk dust that it could not erase well. The teacher would get a volunteer to take a couple of erasers outside to bang them together (like beating a rug) to get the dust out. Most of the boys volunteered, but that was just to get out of the classroom. None of us minded the dust if it gave us the chance to miss a little bit of class. But banging those erasers together produced enormous clouds of dust - choking, smothering dust. The wise student learned how to do this wihtout having most of the dust blown into their faces. The unwise learned quickly. Some of us refrained from volunteering when there was no wind at all, since that meant the dust cloud had nowhere to go, thus enveloping you in a deadly haze, from which one returned only with permanent breathing issues.

When someone says in a movie, "like fingernails on a chalk board," my children just don't get it.
When a boy in an older movie has breathing problems, I think chalk dust, while my children think weak lungs. My children are sooooo deprived!

Medium

Several people have asked what I use to do my drawings. The majority of them are done solely with felt-tip pens. There are several manufacturers for the fine-point pens, so it is not difficult to find different colors in a fine-point felt-tip. I have noticed that Wal-Mart carries a sufficient variety. If you want a bit more, then Office Depot, Michael's, or similar stores should give you more choice than you can handle. At one point I also invested in a set of Sharpies with quite a few different colors. These are not quite as fine a tip (notice the difference between the purple and the blue above), they spread a little, and they bleed through more. However, for doing art on porcelain or tile, they are magnificent.

In the above drawing, I also used a crayon for the blue sky background, and then I added the rain in pencil using a straightedge to keep me in line. Most times I don't care if all the lines are not quite parallel, but this time I chose to keep myself straight.

Almost all of my drawings are done on plain printer paper, most of which I have rescued from the recycle bin (some even from the trash can). I am appalled at how much paper (etc.) is thrown away when it is quite good.

Although I also use colored pencils on occasion, as well as the above mentioned media, I much prefer simple fine-point felt-tip pens.

Having said all of that, I have an admission to make. I may return to regular pens. When I use a pen, I only carry the 0.2 mm rolling ball pens. It would be fun to use them for my drawings, and I did at the beginning, back when I was developing my form, but they are not always reliable. But I recently met someone who had a 0.08 mm pen - and envy welled up within me. They ARE avaiable. Maybe some day soon! (if I can find them in several colors)

Illuminated Scripture

I promised that I would post an example of my illuminated Scripture. I have started with the book of Romans, since it combines the context given by the old testament with the amazing message of freedom we have in Christ - not freedom to sin, but freedom from the penalty and the power of sin over us.

Illuminating anything - whether Scripture, books, or a letter to a friend - is a lot of work, but it is fun work that bring pleasure, not just when completed, but every time the item is read.

Here is my sample: (above).

Taking On New Shape

Sometimes I just like to create something with a different shape. This one is from last year, but most people who see it still react to it positively.