Today's creative prompt: Illuminations
Today I visited an exhibition at the Bodleian Libraries entitled Treasured. It is a small room packed with incredible books and manuscripts from what feels like all times and places. I can hardly describe how amazing this exhibition is. One minute you’re looking at mind-blowing medieval illuminated manuscripts, and the next you’re reading Mary Shelley’s handwritten first draft of Frankenstein, or the Magna Carta or an ancient Chinese scroll with the most intricate gilded illuminations imaginable.
The exhibition finishes on 1 February, which is quite soon, but I highly recommend visiting if you have the time — it’s well worth it.
For this creative prompt, I’d like to invite you to think about the idea of illumination or illustration.
Creative Prompt: Illumination / Illustration
Choose a text — this could be a story, poem, book, song lyrics, letter, speech, vocal performance or any written material. It might be something classic or something personally resonant for you. It could be a text you’ve always loved or been intrigued by. You may already be aware of imagery or illustration that usually accompanies it, or you may have never seen it illustrated at all.
Next, either choose a section or quotation from the text, or think about the text as a whole.
Create at least one image that acts as your own illumination or illustration for that text — an image intended to conjure, respond to, accompany, or sit alongside the words that inspired it.
You can work with any materials or approaches you enjoy. This is not about correctness or decoration, but about your personal visual response to language.
As always, you’re invited to share what you make on the forum, along with any thoughts about the text you chose and what drew you to it.
Medieval Ashmole Bestiary illumination of the biblical Adam naming the creatures of the earth. Exhibited in the Treasured exhibition.
Marc Chagall's Daphnis and Chloe is a series of 42 lithographs contained in the illustrated book.
David Hockney, Illustration from Six Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm.
William Blake - Songs of Innocence and of Experience.
have fun ...