Celtic Knotwork

I bought this book in England on my honeymoon, back when I did this sort of work a lot. Then I stopped. But now I'm back at it and I can't stop. And this book has been invaluable. In fact, the quality of the knotworks I can make using these methods are one of the reasons I can't stop doing them during any little bit of free time I have. The technique is a bit intensive. And time consuming to set up. And it does make you want to scream at times. But the results are fantastic. My biggest problem with it is that the author sometimes assumes you know where he's going with it, and seems to skip a step along the way. I think he just assumed the intelligence of the reader would make the same leap he did, but it's still annoying. But with practice, I've gotten quite good at it. And, as I said, the results are worth it.

Wonderfully written with detailed pictures from the Book of Kells as well as others showing the underlying layout of the actual knotwork. The techniques shown are SO easy and SO basic, it's a wonder that this isn't more popular. I thought to myself before I purchased this book that it was going to take a lot of practice and time to get it right, but the first day I was actually drawing knots! The second day I was learning how to bend them into borders and other shapes. If you ever thought that you'd like to learn how to draw knotwork, you can! Buy this book and you'll be drawing within hours.

Yeah, the method is technical. A T-Square and triangle are helpful. But for complex, good looking designs, this is the book to use.Why is it different? Most books (elder Bain, Sturrock, Meehan) use a center line method--you draw the center of the knot using the grid, and then yuo trace out along either side. But the problem with this is that the line widths vary easily, and thus the knots don't look so good.This book uses a Edge line method--the edges of the knots are drawn with the grid. So all of the pieces of the knot are the same width. Which makes it look much nicer.And it makes it simpler in some ways. Since the edge lines are made with a ruler, after all of the layout work (which there is a lot, I'll admit) there is little freehand work needed, jus' for the curves. (And a circular stencil makes this so much easier).

This book is the only one that I have seen that shows you enough of the construction of celtic knotwork to enable me to modify existing designs. If you simply want to copy things, the dover art series is the book for you. If you wish to get into the details of the art enough to create fresh designs or to 'straighten bent borders' and 'bend straight borders' or cut things in half, this is the book for you. After reading it I found that I also noticed things in existing art that I had never looked for before. Prior to reading this book I had tried to freehand modify certain designs, and met with fairly, though I am a fair sketcher. With this book I was able to modify a design for my purposes, and then using a chalked grid, draw it from scratch on leather, to use in quillworking.

... then you must have this book! it is outstanding, with very good designs!