I was a bit apprehensive when the Thetford Chamber Singers asked me to create a poster with a Celtic knot. I've always liked Celtic knots, but it had just never crossed my mind to make one. I'd somehow thought of Celtic knots as a past art, like hieroglyphics.

I discovered that was wrong. There's quite a community of Celtic knot designers, as I discovered when I began researching on the web. Scores of wonderful examples, and detailed tutorials explaining how to design knots on a grid are easy to find. All fascinating -- a whole new world to explore.

But most delightful find was the Celtic knot font! The letters of this font are knot segments which can be queued together to create wonderful patterns, and an occasional mess. It's very addictive, and highly satisfying.

In this piece I created the inner "separated" unit, and mirrored it and flipped it to create all four in Freehand. For the outer "connected" section, I created one face and corner, and again flipped and rotated it to complete the knot.

When they approved the knot and poster, they asked me to show them how it would look in lapis lazuli blue and golden yellow. After doing safe versions with a blue background and yellow accents, and another with a yellow background and blue accents, I decided to go for the gusto with the blue to yellow gradient in the background and mix the two colors to create an ochre for the knot. With the type in yellow or white with blue drop shadows, the ochre knot appeared to float in space. By using the white of the paper, and mixing the inks, it appears to be more than a 2-color poster.

The poster artwork is reformated to be used as postcards, the program cover, and ads in the newspaper.

The Thetford Chamber Singers perform a diverse range of choral works, each concert having its own distinct flavor and theme.

This is the poster for their Christmas '01 concert.

They wanted a serene, Japanese ink brush-style image for their spring '01 concert. I created this image using Fractal Design Explorer, a unique "natural media" vector-based illustration program. It works like Freehand or Illustrator, but the lines emulate brush strokes, with tapering points, diffuse edges, transparency. It's a fantastic program with great potential, but it never caught on, and has not been continued. Very sad.

For their Christmas '00 concert they wanted a woodblock print-style image. I discovered this "clip-art" image of angels which was ideal for the poster. Complimentary typography and borders finished the piece.