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hi artists it's miss Messer your friendly neighborhood art teacher a lot of times I teach you about contemporary artists that's artists making artwork right now but today we're gonna go back in time hundreds of years to talk about something called illuminated manuscripts we're going to go back to the era called the Middle Ages which was from about the Year 500 to the Year 1500 hundreds of years ago during this time before there were computers before even a ballpoint pen was invented or paper was mass-produced it was really expensive to print books and mostly unless you were really rich you didn't know how to read or write anyway but sometimes people like kings or priests did one books especially books they thought were important like the Bible and instead of having them be all words they wanted them to have illustrations to make them more interesting having illustrations on them also helped those who couldn't read understand what was happening these books were called illuminated manuscripts illuminated means that something is lit up kind of like a Christmas tree but they didn't have Christmas tree lights so they use gold paint to make it look like the pages were shimmering manuscript means book but it comes from a Latin word that means written by hand that's because all of these illuminated manuscripts hundreds of pages were written by hand without the aid of technology the whole book could take wait for it up to 20 years to complete so today artists we're gonna start by making an illuminated letter not a whole book just a letter we will use one letter from our name we will use a theme for our work and we will bring with us the knowledge of art history to create our own illuminated letters all right let's take a look at a couple examples noticing as many details as you can so check out this letter X notice there's a man on the X that's true but there's also a very interesting background complete with patterns same with this one check out the pattern around the oh and in the hole behind the woman here we have some figures inside the openings of the letter B we also have the very intricate patterns on the sides of the B itself we've got the letter P and the fish are making the letter itself so they're forming the lines that make the letter the same goes for this another P but this time it's a dog that's for me in that shape and then here's a great example of a theme it's the letter B but we can see it's a theme of flower or garden and we can see that in the choices that the artist is making today we're going to start with an idea drawing to get some of your ideas flowing this is the first step on your project completion sheet so I'm going to show you how to complete it so you can make an awesome artwork write your name and class code and then choose one letter from your first or last name and write it I'm going to write em for Messer okay my next step is to practice writing the letter as a block letter in the Box to the right first I'm going to lightly write out that letter that I chose in its capital form I'm going to fill the whole box with the letter but I'll leave a little bit of room around it then I'm going to draw a box around the letter that I just drew then I grab my eraser and erase the inside line last I make any necessary changes to improve my block letter so the third question asks you to choose a theme for your illuminated letter think of things you enjoy for example some ideas might be night music football summer winter flowers I chose the theme of fall because it's my favorite season the fourth question asks you to practice in drawing out your block letter in the bottom box and then illustrate it with your theme include a border that makes sense for your theme so I'm gonna start out by drawing the black letter the same as I did before filling up almost the whole space starting with that light letter and then drawing a box around it then I erase the inside line and now I'm free to start adding my theme into my work I can use the theme of this drawing to tell a story just like the illuminated letters of the past it or I can choose to illustrate the idea of something I'm going to choose to illustrate the idea of fall it helps me to make a list of things I can draw that go with this theme of fall like leaves pumpkins the color of fall like red yellow orange and brown I could draw a scarecrow I can add parts of Halloween and Thanksgiving but I decided I want to draw some hills in the background add leaves to my letter and add other details to my work watch to see how I finish my work and now you know all the steps to start your own I am so excited to see how these turn out good luck and have fun