This is a digitally colored version of an ink drawing I did ’way back in 1985. I’ve tried a couple of color treatments over the years, but till now I hadn’t managed anything that I really liked. I do really like this one.
It’s softer than most of my recent digital knotwork, and it reminds me of my very early watercolor paintings - when I was really tinting drawings. The colors in those watercolors gradually grew stronger until I often omitted the inks altogether. So this piece resembles some of the paintings I did in the early 80’s, while I was making that transition.
I picked this piece to do as part of a project I’d just completed. The outer knotwork border uses a pattern I created as part of my book of Celtic art designs.
|| $16.00 || http://www.deviantart.com/print/733050/This is a complex Celtic art "Carpet Page", a bit like the full page decorative panels found in illuminated manuscripts like the Book of Kells or the Book of Lindisfarne. The image combines designs I originally drew on paper with others that I created entirely on my computer, using Adobe Photoshop.
This print is a 300 dpi printed copy of my digital painting. It’s 16 by 20 inches in size, including a solid color "matte" border - that means that you could frame it as is, or of course you could have it matted and framed, as you like.
The central design is a very ancient one called a "Triskelion" - a three-armed spiral. During the Middle Ages a variation on this pattern was adopted as the symbol of the Isle of Man, which lies between Britain and Ireland in the middle of the Irish Sea. The island was of tremendous strategic importance in those days, since a navy based there could dominate the passage between those two islands. These days it mainly seems to be a nice place to take a vacation.
Surrounding the triskelion are a variety of spiral patterns, fretwork, gripping beasts, and knotwork borders in an overall design that recalls a piece of jewelry.
|| $38.00 || http://www.deviantart.com/print/95254/This is a knotwork design that transmogrifies itself into an image of An Claidhheam Soluis, or "The Sword of Light". Parts of it are pretty representational, but other parts - notably the hilt - are really abstract knotwork patterns in the shape of the object.
An Claidheamh Soluis itself was certainly the name of a bilingual Irish / English newspaper in the early 20th century, a part of the Celtic Revival movement; it just as certainly was the name of an fictional sword in Padraic Colum’s wonderful book The King of Ireland’s Son. But while some will tell you that it was the traditional name for a legendary sword, I’m almost positive that it wasn’t.
It just sounds that way, especially to anyone who doesn’t know that actual legendary Irish swords had names that were a little less metaphysical - like "Retaliator", or "Swift to Hand".
In the true Irish stories no one ever noticed if there was some kind of misty Celtic twilight going on; because limbs and heads were flying every which way, and at times like that you’ve got to pay some pretty serious attention.
Anyway the paper was a great thing, the Padraic Colum book was a great thing, and here I’ve made of it a thing of my own.
|| $38.00 || http://www.deviantart.com/print/957509/This is a large Celtic "Carpet Page" design, like the many full page, decorative pages in medieval illuminated manuscripts such as the Books of Kells, Lindisfarne, and Durrow; but of course the main motif is not a traditional Celtic one. It’s an ornate emblem of piracy, like you’d find on a sort of pirate flag that, of course, you’d never actually find anywhere or anywhen.
This print is a 300 dpi printed copy of my digital painting. It’s 18 by 24 inches in size.
In sober fact, none of the branches of the Celtic tree were famous for seafaring. The closest we’d come historically would be the Venetii tribe, on the coast of Gaul - what’s still a Celtic territory today, though we now call it Brittany - and the Venetii probably almost always stayed in sight of land. Semihistorically, or maybe in the land of legend, there’s also the Welsh prince Madoc and Ireland’s Saint Brendan, who each embarked on an imram, or journey-adventure, to the far west.
But on the other hand the Irish, at least, were no strangers to the Caribbean in buccaneer days, if only because Oliver Cromwell had sold so many of them into slavery there.
So pardon me for mixing up my Pirates of the Caribbean and my Celtic Art. The fact is, I just really liked the idea.
|| $40.00 || http://www.deviantart.com/print/196302/The Offogerty harp is a wire strung Irish (or Celtic) harp that dates from the 17th century. These instruments have a magical, ringing voice with a long sustain; their sound lies somewhere between a harpsichord and a bell.
This is a print of my digital painting of the Offogerty Harp - it’s 16 by 20 inches in size at 300 DPI, and the image is based on a photograph from Robert Bruce Armstrong’s The Irish and Highland Harps. Purists may note that I have taken a couple of small liberties with the painting.
Here the harp is superimposed over a bold Celtic knotwork border; faint interlace designs also appear in the background margins and the backdrop, behind the borders.
Once the property of Cornelius O’ffogerty, this harp is of the type we call a "large, low-headed" Irish harp, which is typical of the seventeenth century. It is not highly decorated but its lines are both striking and unusual among surviving examples - the large scroll at the end of the harmonic curve is its most distinctive feature.
Its soundboard was pierced for thirty-six strings, while the harmonic curve never carried more than thirty-five tuning pins. Because only thirty-four string holes are visible in the photograph I’ve chosen to string it with thirty-four strings - hopefully not further adding to the confusion.
|| $38.00 || http://www.deviantart.com/print/95262/Here’s a little bouillabaisse of Lovecraftian horror and Celtic art. A marriage not made in heaven, obviously, but given the subject - well, that’s just fine.
Cthulhu, known among necromancers as "The Elvis of the Great Old Ones", is possibly not dreaming here - as we hope he continues to do - but its hard to be sure with those pearly eyes. Anyway his tentacles divide and dissolve into bands of Celtic knotwork in a way that pleases me.
The digital painting (Photoshop) was created for a T-shirt design for my newly relaunched Saga Shirts site, where I’m now doing a new line of full color shirt designs, rather than the silkscreened shirts I had there before.
The print version is a high resolution image full of eldritch detail and oddly batrachian textures. It’s the perfect accent, I think, for that eighteenth century basement you’ve got; you know, the one with the odd wooden hatch bolted over what looks like some sort of well. With the scratching noises.
|| $40.00 || http://www.deviantart.com/print/853283/It’s been a long while since I was a pagan (I just don’t do gods any more), so don’t jump to too many conclusions here; I simply wanted to do something interesting with a bold shape encrusted with knotwork, and I thought that this would be a really striking image. Eventually I did something similar with a Celtic cross, just to muddy the theological waters even more, or to give equal time, or something - because it’s also a striking symbol in its Celtic version.
I’ve done two treatments of the pentacle, one gold, and the other silver; each one is essentially the same except for its palette.
There are eighteen "gripping beast" dragons - ten in the circle, eight in the corners - with several panels of interlaced bands - and of course the pentacle itself is here turned into a knotwork design.
|| $40.00 || http://www.deviantart.com/print/95260/I’ve been meaning to do a Celtic Cross for years - at least since I did my knotwork pentacles - but until I started noodling around with this one I never cared for the layouts I came up with.
The design uses three of the knotwork patterns I designed for my book Celtic Knotwork Borders in Repeating Sections and I’m not sure whether that was partly a proof of concept, or whether I just saw ways to use the patterns I was working on. Either way, I finally did a cross as my way of offering equal time.
The shape of a Celtic cross is an interesting one - it’s based on carved stone crosses which may originally have shown up in Scotland, and the typical ring around the cross seems to have been invented to make the arms of the cross stronger. They were building for the long term in those days.
|| $40.00 || http://www.deviantart.com/print/733088/It’s been a long while since I was a pagan (I just don’t do gods any more), so don’t jump to too many conclusions here; I simply wanted to do something interesting with a bold shape encrusted with knotwork, and I thought that this would be a really striking image. Eventually I did something similar with a Celtic cross, just to muddy the theological waters even more, or to give equal time, or something - because it’s also a striking symbol in its Celtic version.
I’ve done two treatments of the pentacle, one gold, and the other silver; each one is essentially the same except for its palette.
There are eighteen "gripping beast" dragons - ten in the circle, eight in the corners - with several panels of interlaced bands - and of course the pentacle itself is here turned into a knotwork design.
|| $40.00 || http://www.deviantart.com/print/95258/Back when I started my first shirt series at Saga Shirts I concentrated on taking recognizable symbols - many of them modern - and composing them out of dense thickets of Celtic knotwork. I really liked the results, but I found that it was a pretty narrow vein to mine. There weren’t a whole lot of other symbols that fit the bill.
But here’s one I didn’t do then, and have wanted to do all along - the Peace symbol. think of this as that point where the 1960’s collide with the 960’s. Not that there was any sort of peace movement in the tenth century, mind you. But if you’d been a medieval monk hunched over his illuminated manuscript just when the Vikings (or your neighbors) came over the hill with torches*, you’d have found that there were worse things to wish for. And illuminate. Pretty much as it is today.
*Contrary to what you may think, the contemporary Irish records show that more churches were burned by Irishmen than by Vikings. Not that the Vikings didn’t do it with a lot of style.
|| $38.00 || http://www.deviantart.com/print/1943417/This is an expanded version of an earlier piece (Triskelion Mandala I).
Once I’d lived with the first one for awhile I kept on picturing it in different ways, as a decorative cover on an illuminated manuscript, or as a carpet design, a bedspread, or a door. And when I looked at it that way I wanted it to be contained by an overall framework, as the central panel in a more rigid design - as though it were one of those objects I’d been picturing it on.
This print is a 300 dpi printed copy of my digital painting. It’s 20 by 24 inches in size, including a solid color "matte" border - that means that you could frame it as is, or of course you could have it matted and framed, as you like.
The central design is a very ancient one called a "Triskelion" - a three-armed spiral. During the Middle Ages a variation on this pattern was adopted as the symbol of the Isle of Man, which lies between Britain and Ireland in the middle of the Irish Sea. The island was of tremendous strategic importance in those days, since a navy based there could dominate the passage between those two islands. These days it mainly seems to be a nice place to take a vacation.
Surrounding the triskelion are a variety of spiral patterns, fretwork, gripping beasts, and knotwork borders in an overall design that recalls a piece of jewelry.
|| $40.00 || http://www.deviantart.com/print/99615/Although this is recognizably what we call Celtic knotwork, the subject is of course Norse. If I were going to defend that I’d point out that prior to the seventh century, you were more likely to find patterns like knotwork on Saxon or Scandinavian artifacts than on Scottish or Irish; I might add that while these groups were culturally distinct there are many examples in their languages that are clearly related (like the Irish "Rig" vs. the Germanic "rik" for king, or the very words "Teuton" vs. "Tuatha" for words meaning tribe.
But I’d never mention that, because it could get me beaten up in so very many bars in so many parts of the world that I’d be a fool to talk about it.
So anyway. Here’s Mjolnir, Thor’s hammer, composed of intricate knotwork like an ancient piece of jewelry; including two serpents, who remind us of Jormungandr, the Midgard Serpent - whose fate was entwined with Thor’s.
|| $38.00 || http://www.deviantart.com/print/957520/"Sun Horse, Moon Horse" is a colorful and detailed celtic design of two winged horses - one for the Sun, one for the Moon. Knotwork designs surround and include them, with other intricate borders appearing on their bodies.
Above and below are wide borders with a design of interlaced dogs separated by the faces of the Sun (above) and Moon (below). The Moon shows her four phases across the border.
"Sun Horse, Moon Horse" is also the name of a powerful, short book by Rosemary Sutcliff; the book is about the nature of art and the nature of leadership, and the creation of the Great Chalk Horse of Uffington. This painting has no connection with that book other than its title.
|| $48.00 || http://www.deviantart.com/print/95264/