Saturday, February 21, 2009

brainstorming for "host of the air" first initial

Today's motto was keep it simple, and that is exactly what happened here. The swoosh of fabric has no discernable iconographic purpose, but it looks cool and solves the question of what to do with the letter d's tail. To give this illumination relevance to Air, Brigid's Cross hangs off the tengwa. Color differentiation will highlight the letter o (the actual capital letter). The fun things about theta (the vowel ... in this case the right hook that is separate) is that when they are the first letter in a piece, the tengwa (the consonant ... in this case the letter that looks like an m with a long tail) has to be illuminated as well. You can't very well write a theta without it's carrier, and a 48pt theta written over a 22pt carrier might be somewhat amiss. Thus, in cases like this, efforts must be taken to emphasize the letter that is really being capitalized whilst illuminating them both.

The misc. grapes and chalice illustrations are ideas for various accent images to be strategically placed around/beside/near the text body. Not so much obscure symbolism, these objects are pulled from/derived directly from the text itself. Known exceptions are the possible fire in the chalice (Too Harry Potter? Darn you Rowling.) and the sheaf of oats (direct symbolism tied to Brigid the goddess and Imbolc).

No comments: