How to make an Illuminated Manuscript

I know that I’m onto something when students thank me for creating and project, and continually tell me how much fun they’re having. That’s what happened with this Illuminated Manuscript Project.

While most of the time my class is choice/TAB ( teaching for artistic behavior), where students develop their own ideas and prompts, they also love having a bit of change once and awhile, where I provide more specific constraints.

After looking at some historical examples, students created their own version of an illuminated manuscript.

This is where I always land on one of my favorite quotes, ” You don’t know what you don’t know.”

When using text in their artwork, I remind them to think of each line of the text as mark making, and the overall text as an object, this helps them to think about incorporating it into the overall composition.