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My interest in Celtic art started when my parents started researching our genealogy. We started going to numerous Celtic cultural events in the NYC area. My professional background is mechanical engineering and the art attracted me immediately. My first efforts began with “CELTIC ART the Methods of Construction” by George Bain, Dover Publications. My first attempts with pencil and paper were pathetic. My eye-hand coordination is just not up to the task of serious drawing. My hand writing is atrocious let alone trying to sketch. However, I can just look at an example of Celtic art and tell whether the artist had the ‘true’ vision, or did they just ‘fake’ their way through it. For a long time I wanted to do some form of computer Celtic art, but I did not poses the technique or the tools to do the quality work I envisioned.
Then I found a book “Celtic Charted Designs” by Co Spinhoven, Dover Publications. By that time I had my first real computer, a Dell 310 386 machine, running at a blinding 20Mhz. I started using a program that came bundled with a hand scanner. I painstakingly bit edited the charted designs intended for embroidery, needlepoint, knitting and crochet. This book has a vast catalog of step, fret and key patterns, spirals and knot work. However, it did not provide very many neat, mitered corners. During this period I learned how to miter my own corners by: producing the basic pattern, repeating it a couple of times, copying a portion, rotating and/or mirroring it, then joining the pieces and cleaning them up. This produced very pleasing results but there were several drawbacks. The designs came out very tiny, determined by the pixel size on the screen or printer. It was also not easy for me to customize my own designs. When I stretched a design to fit into slightly irregular areas, the designs produced ugly jagged edges.
During a four day pub tour of Ireland, I found the key. (See outline.html for a quick outline.) In a small book store across the street from Trinity Collage, Dublin, I purchased a copy of “Celtic Knotwork” by Iain Bain, Constable London, 1986. This book showed me how to draw knot work on a grid that controls the width of the cord in the knot work and the spacing between the cords. By now the company I work for was using a program called Micrographix Designer. This program is a vector based drawing program something like AutoCAD but it is geared more towards illustration. At last I was on the right track. I developed a basic ‘vocabulary’ of about 11 basic knots. Using these, I drew most of the knots in the collection. After the pattern is drawn, I simply export the design as a .PCX file. You may also want to get a copy of the “Celtic Design” series by Adian Meehan, Thames and Hudson. I found these books a very valuable resource on how most Celtic art can be set out on a grid and how to use geometry to control the lines and curves.
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