Monday, October 8, 2012

Every Inchie Monday

Today's prompt for our inchie is ETERNITY.

This is my interpretation:

It is a Celtic knot with the word ETERNITY written in it.
  
I chose this because the early English Christians used the Celtic knot as a symbol of the eternal qualities of the Trinity, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. The Celtic knot has no beginning and no end.   You can find examples of it all over early Christian manuscripts. 

I was quite pleased with myself in drawing this.  I started drawing Celtic knots almost a year ago and found it quite difficult and confusing.  I found a lot of instructions on the internet  including video clips, using carefully placed dots as guidelines.  So when I started to draw this one, I anticipated that it might be too much trouble.  Still, I sat down and casually drew a knot free-hand without any interweaving. 
Suddenly I could see exactly what I had to do to make it a real Celtic knot.  How come? 
This is the actual page from my sketch pad where I started to decide what I would draw for my inchie.   (counterclockwise):

1. I started with the idea of a ring . Didn't like it particularly.
2. I then drew the quick sketch of the Celtic knot.
3.  I tried again, only larger so I could double the line and have room to write the word Eternity in it.
4. A rough  sketch of how it might look.  Now I knew it would work.

I think this is a prime example of the benefits of practice and more practice.  I had never tried to do a Celtic  knot without some kind of help in front of me before.  I hadn't drawn any of these in recent months.  I was so surprised how easy it was.  

Actually I had more problem scanning and cropping this piece since I still haven't completely mastered the ins and outs of the new scanner.

More inchies illustrating Eternity can be found by clicking here.

6 comments:

MorningAJ said...

We had very similar ideas this week. I did a love knot on mine.

Well done for drawing it without instructions.

Of course the Celtic knot is an adaptation of the Celtic triskele, which pre-dates Christianity by a couple of thousand years. :)

ChrisJ said...

I'm sure you're right, AJ. It is a good example of how the early Roman church took pagan - or better, pre-Christian, customs and simply gave them a Christian makeover. New wine into old wine-skins, so to speak. Shouldn't have happened that way.

snafu said...

Infinity is not an easy thing to sum up unless you are a mathematician, then you use the infinity symbol, a figure eight on its side which is actually a simple knot. The trefoil knot you have used, according the mathematics of Knot Theory, is the simplest knot that cannot be untied and is truly infinite although paradoxically finite. A good choice for infinity.
PS I was a teacher too, bet you can't tell :)

ChrisJ said...

Hi Snafu: I did know the sign for infinity but chose not to use it because it was so obvious a choice.

Wanda said...

So enjoyed your entry, but especially your process and explanation.

The other comments were very intereing too.

kaybee said...

An interesting and meaningful inchie!