John, con't (14)

So here we are. The end of John at last. This page is the confrontation of Doubting Thomas, with his response in nice big letters because it was a fitting ending. The drawings and colours are continued from the previous page.

John has an 'Appendix,' chapter 21, that was likely added after the rest of the book. It closes very nicely and I didn't really want to have this directly afterward because it doesn't quite fit, and would mess up the nice ending. So I did what the book does, and just added it on after. This is the very last page layout. It goes back to the plain font and columns from the very beginning of the book, and I didn't add an illustration at all because I didn't want it to take away at all from the ending of the proper ending of the previous page.

John, con't (13)

Time to get back to John. We had just finished with the crucifixion and death. This part is known in paintings as 'The Deposition,' and since I feel most familiar with that type of thing that's what I always call this page, even though there's not illustration. What it means is the removal of Jesus' body form the cross. That's followed quickly by The Entombment.

Closeup of the writing. It's supposed to look like cracks.

But let's get past that to the good stuff! The following layout is the resurrection. It's actually only two pages, but with a translucent page in between, which is why there are double the amount of photos. But it's not actually two separate layouts, just the different views of the page as it is moved. The page in between is made of frosted mylar, a really terrific substance that does look a bit like heavy baking parchment paper and feels a tad plasticky. It looks amazing with pencil crayon.

First view, when you turn to this page. The writing on the left is about the women going to the tomb to anoint the body. The font is back to the nice smooth text, and the lines are nice and straight again. The right page is the reverse side of the frosted mylar, so it's a little foggier, sort of unsaturated and has no texture. It covers the largest illustrated areas of the page under it. But it does give you a hint of what's to come.


Then flip the mylar and you get this! There's veins of gold leaf on the mylar with heavy saturated, celebratory colours in between. Now that it's on the front side you get the full impact. Photo's don't quite capture it, but it's pretty intense and has the most amazing feel. Seriously, if you ever see frosted mylar pick some up and scribble on it with pencil crayon.

On the right side now is the resurrection. There are dancers in there in gold leaf (from old sketches of my friends and roommate. I've done several of those and love putting them in), and surrounding them is that blue/purple 'royal' colour I used on the crucifixion page, in a pattern made by the gold leaf. It's supposed to look like stained glass windows. This layout has the most colour and gold leaf of the entire book.

Closeups:

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Again, should be pretty obvious where we are here. Remember that red line I've been talking about? Well this is where it leads. Other than the coffee stains it's almost the only colour in this entire section of the book, to give it more impact. It's lined with gold leaf. The image is taken from a painting commission I did, based on the purchaser's dream.


This part is actually bits of canvas and scrap paper glued to the page, then painted and written over. Since this book's purpose is to be a piece of art rather than to transmit the text like a tradition manuscript, it didn't need to be legible.

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Now we're at the good stuff. It should be obvious what part we're at now. INRI stands for the Latin of 'Jesus Christ, King of the Jews.' It's in gold leaf. Gold leaf sticks to itself, so when the book is closed these pages do get a little stuck, and look a bit worn, but I like it.


The thorns are based on a Dürer drawing. The blue/purple parts (chosen because of it's association as a royal colour) is actually scrap bits of the mulberry paper used at the very beginning of the book. I mixed it with watered down glue and stuck it on. The dye bled a little and I used it to 'paint.' It has great texture and really rich colour.

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The art and story are still developing here. It's darker. The nice live vines are replaced with thorns and rope, though still some fruit on the bottom left. There are two gold leaf 'I AM' statements on this layout, so there is teensy Hebrew from Exodus (I'm sure you've all been paying careful attention to these post and know what I'm talking about, right? See the third post) intertwined with the thorns.

By the end of this page I've finished with any guide lines and the writing is very sharp and untidy.

Closeups:





This next set of pages begins to introduce a bit of colour. Well, coffee stains. Almost the entire background is covered except for inside the rope. Then there's plenty of ink layered on top and dripped over the finished product. The images are basically the same as the last page, only much larger, and take over the page entirely by the end. There's one gear on the bottom left from the beginning of this half of the book, just to kind of show that this is what all that was leading up to - the crucifixion is the next page (which is part of the reason the words end where they do, but also it looks nice to have empty paper and works very very with the overall feel). So this page really is foreshadow the next one with it's colour and images.


Closeups:

John, con't (9)

Next page. I'm afraid there's not really much to say about these ones. They're basically a continuation of the last few pages. Here's the closeups:




The page after that has a lot more going on. It's got a sort of bridge/arch this in the background, and it's dark all around. The vines have things growing off them: stylized bells and pomegranates. The far right side has a trinity symbol growing out of the arch. And there's that long horizontal line again!

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This is one of my favourite layouts. This one mainly illustrates the 'I am the vine' statement. So, there are plenty of vines winding their way around the page. Coming off them are the blessings of the land (How's you Deuteronomy?), well grapes and olives mostly because it looked better that way. These shapes are supposed to tie in with the previous page. On the right they start to become angular and thorny, leading into the next part of the story. The text is no longer in any kind of columns here, though it is still following the lines.

Close-ups:

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All right, next page with closeups after this shot of the full layout. Just a couple things to note with this one, really. The text is breaking away from its nice lines and following the art instead. The background is more prominent. The imagery is nice and smooth (this part is Palm Sunday), and the viney things on the left are going to be getting important soon, so keep an eye out for those to reappear and start changing with the story.

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Now we're at the part where Jesus predicts Judas' betrayal and Peter's denial, and on right is another I am statement, in this case "the way, the truth, and the life."
The large illustration there isn't actually. It's a transfer of an old etching of gargoyles. I wanted a a nice big piece, needed to start a new visual for evil/bad things coming up, and to darken the page/whole tone of the piece. I also wanted something very different than what had come up before.

It's an acrylic medium transfer. Pretty simply, you put matte medium on both pieces of paper, stick them together, let it dry, and then wash the top one off. It get's a little fuzzy and lighter, but overall I quite like how they look. I've seen some awesome photos transferred this way, but you need to do it onto something porous. I wish you could do it on glass, I can't remember what one of my classmates used to that that but it was gorgeous, she made a chandelier among other things, but that's not really relevant. I get a little passionate when I start talking about art and go on and on and on!

Originally I had planned to use more of these transfers, but in the end this was the only one that ended up in the book. I'm not totally sure why, it didn't end up totally as nice as I wanted, but now looking at it I really like the look. I put ink around it to blend it into the page, that sort of thing will be coming up in the next few pages, and I seem to have erased an entire sentence too. No more covering up mistakes with gold leaf, that's saved for special parts, the tone is darker instead. I do have one symbol in gold leaf at the bottom, a very thin halo in gold leaf next to the bits about God. I really really like this part. In the first part of the book I likely would have done that with watercolour, it was much more traditional that way, but here everything is black ink with specks of gold used more judiciously.


And here's the close up of the second page. The illustrations are for that I am statement. A roads, map type things, and flowers/vines for life. But no colour, not in this section! The two halves of the book are pretty easy to distinguish in style, colour, symbols. The black background is creeping in, though I was still writing around it. Also, the calligraphy is not quite as precise as it used to be. It's going to slowly get angular and rough, but here I was just writing a little faster and not paying much attention to the edges of the columns.

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Well, today started out with me falling asleep with my coffee. This wouldn't be terrible except that my husband brought it to me in bed... and therefore I made a giant mess. I suppose it did wake me up. At least I'd put french toast casserole in the over yesterday, all in hopes of it saving enough time that I could post some more of John.

But, as promised, here are the larger photos of the above layout, just click on them to open up the full size.

So here is the transition to the Book of Glory. It's probably the largest illustration so far, and also a different style. This part is about bit about time and things falling into place, so the pictures are of gears and an hourglass. I didn't even known what steampunk was at the time, but here it is! There's also feet washing, hence the water.

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Here's some more little illustrations. I did quite a bit with light, water, and plants/living type things. Supposed to be very organic looking. Much of it looks similar except for the colour because it makes it more coherent. I don't really like the 'light rays' going on in the background, now I think they look a little like lightning bolts and surely I could have come up with something better than that? It's the symbol that says 'this bit's about a miracle.'


I do like these wheat things on the side here, though.

And here I've got an opening letter with the outline in gold leaf and illustration inside it. I didn't do much of that because I just didn't want it to look too much like a traditional manuscript. Also, to make them very big I would have had to know exactly where they were going to be in the page before I started, and I mostly just went along until I got to one.

You might be noticing the different column layouts. I had a three column layout and a two column layout that went underneath the actual page (in different colours so I wouldn't get mixed up) and just sort of varied them so it wouldn't get too boring. The page on the left I combined the second and third.


So here's one of those red lines I've been mentioning. It will be very important at the crucifixion, but it's here because this part of the story predicts it.

Here's another part I'm not overly fond of. Also, I can't spell the word 'shepherd' even when I'm copying it three times over. Disaster.

In addition to the 'I am God' statements there are also 'I am (metaphor of some kind)' statements. They all got illustrations. Mostly because they're important bits of the story, but also because concrete images are easy for draw! This one's 'I am the gate.'



More red lines! Also I dropped some ink on the page and made it part of the decoration. That was actually fine because that will soon become a major part of the background so this is a nice bit of foreshadowing.


See! More and more of the black stuff. Also, we're almost at the transition from Book of Signs to Book of Glory, where the art will really start integrating with the text, so this is a little start.

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Here's a few more photos. Once I get to the good stuff I'll post much larger photos along with the two page layouts, but for now I'll just stick with this because there's really not that much to see. Or really even talk about. The landscape at the bottom of this page is from a sketch I did when I was in Nazareth.


When you see long gold bars like this it's gold leaf over some portion of the text I messed up. I couldn't really use white out and there was no way I was going to redo all that work, so I just covered it up and made it look pretty.


John has seven 'I am' statements, which is John's way of telling you Jesus thought he was God, and refer back to Exodus. Again with the oversimplification that doesn't make any sense... oh well. I put them in gold leaf wherever they appeared. Point is, the far right hand side has an illustration with the Hebrew from Ex 3.14 'I am that I am' or over and over getting darker and darker, until the bottom line with the English translation.