Melinama does Illustration Friday: "Fierce."

I shivered when I saw this week's prompt. I am trying very hard to have no fierceness or harsh events or thoughts in my life.

So when things get hairy I resort to the self-medication of braided pictures. When I visited my daughter in Manhattan, in order not to get sensory overload I hunched in a corner and did Celtic woven designs.

When I travel I use graph paper and ink. This one, however, I just did with acrylic on canvas, which is pointlessly difficult. It would have been easier, faster, and better looking as watercolor on bristol board.

Oddly, this pattern is modeled after the illuminated manuscript below - which is not, as you might expect, from Ireland: it comes from Bulgaria and is in Old Church Slavonic.

Before Hannah and I went to Bulgaria I wouldn't have expected this. Did these monks get a look at the Book of Kells? Or is there something about life in a monastery which inclines an illuminator to weaving? Or did it come from Scythian woven jewelry?


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