Part 1: Celtic Line Drawing for Engravers

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Welcome to Part 1 of my tutorial Celtic Line Drawing for Engravers. Part 1 addresses Celtic Plaitwork, and provides the basis for the next two advanced tutorials where the really fun part begins, Part 2: Cutwork and Part 3: Circles.

Celtic Line Drawing Parts 2 and 3 are available for purchase through Steve's new EngravingLessons.com here: http://www.engravinglessons.com/On-D...0Tutorials.htm

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Celtic Plaitwork
Simplified Instructions

This animated GIF is what this tutorial is all about, in a nutshell. A simple set of procedures and rules produce a very complicated and fully interwoven Celtic weave pattern. From this simple beginning, an entire world of engraving possibilities opens up.

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Credits: This weaving method originally adapted, developed and extended by Cheryl Samuel. You can see her Web site at http:/www.ravenstail.com, as well as order her more advanced Celtic Line Drawing books - which I highly recommend. This version written and illustrated by Tom Sterling (©Copyright 2010 Tom Sterling).

Copyright 2010 © by Tom Sterling
All rights reserved. This document may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted by the 1976 Copyright Act or in writing by Tom Sterling.

These are the only rules to remember in the Cheryl Samuel method of “weaving” Celtic plaitwork:

Weaves never touch corner circles, nor do they touch the bottom or top row of circles.

We’re going to call these the “Sacred Circles.”


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Start by laying out a grid with small circles for corners. The grid I’ve chosen here is a 4 by 3 grid (that’s four squares across by 3 squares tall).

You can use graph paper or a constructed grid if you like, but I find the hand-drawn ones the most pleasing. Be sure and use a pencil for the first parts of the process, and mark lightly on the paper. We’ll be erasing those marks later before we finish the plaitwork.

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Now go back and put another circle in the center of each four corner circles in a square, like the ones below. Try and make sure you do this fairly neatly, and that the diagonals line up nicely. The neater you do this now, the neater your finished drawing will be.


Now we’ll start the “weaving” process. We always start with the second circle down on the left hand side. We’re going to draw a line from the bottom of the second circle down on the left side to the bottom of the next dot up and to the right (the circle at the center of the block, and diagonally up to the right). This is called an “under” weave. From now on we’re going to alternate “unders” and “overs.” We’ll always start on the left hand side with an “under” weave. Next we would place in an ”over” weave, but if you’ll remember one of our two rules you’ll know we can’t weave to a Sacred Circle on the top row, so we’re finished with this row of weaves.
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Next we’ll start weaving at the next circle down. Remember to start with an “under” weave, then an “over.” Above is that row of weaves finished. Don’t forget you can’t weave to a Sacred Circle in the top row.


Here’s the next (third) row of weaves. This one’s special, since we can’t weave to a corner Sacred Circle. I’ve drawn that one in as a dotted line. It’s important to remember to “think” an under here, or you’ll get confused and not put an “over” to the next circle. (You shouldn’t draw in the dotted line.)
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Here are the rest of the weaves. Remember you can’t weave to a Sacred Circle on a bottom row. I’ve drawn in the dotted lines here, so you should remember to “think” under when starting on a bottom circle. Also, see how the weaves all continue over to the circles on the right hand side, but not the circle on the upper right hand corner. Remember, sides are OK to weave to, not corners or top or bottom circles.


Now we’re going to do a small trick. To make things simpler, we’re going to rotate our paper 90 degrees counter clockwise (a quarter turn to the left). Now our grid is tall, not wide like before. If you remember to do this, all the rules for weaving this way are just like the first steps we took before.
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Now we’ll start just like before, on the second circle down on the left hand side. Just like we did before, we’ll start with an “under” weave. Remember, even with our paper turned 90 degrees, we can still follow the same simple rules as before -- No weaving to corner Sacred Circles, or Sacred Circles on the top or bottom rows. Do notice, however, that some of the Sacred Circles from our first set of under/over linestrokes are no longer sacred, and some that weren't sacred before, are now Sacred Circles!


Above is the second row of weaves, just like we did before. Can you see the pattern of ribbons emerging yet?
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Above, we’ve finished all the weaves. You should definitely see the emerging pattern of woven ribbons now! I’ve drawn in the dotted lines where you should be thinking “under” but not drawing in the weave.


Now let’s turn the paper back to the original position again. We have to draw in the corners and edges that will join all the ribbons together. Above, I’ve added the first corner.
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Above, I’ve added an edge turn just under the first corner. It doesn’t matter where you start, but I think you’ll find it a little easier to begin at one of the corners, and then work your way around the edges from there.


I’ve finished drawing in all the corners and edges. Depending on the number of blocks you’ve chosen for your plaitwork, the ribbons might all be joined together in one single big woven loop or be several separate loops all woven together.
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Now it’s time to start working on making everything look nice. I hope on your plaitwork you’ve used a pencil and have drawn all your circles and lines in very lightly! That’s important because now we’re going to go over all of our lines in ink, neaten everything up and then erase all the pencil lines. When you’re going over the lines for the ribbon with ink, make sure where one ribbon goes under another that all your lines appear to continue straight across, as if they really do connect up. Above, I’ve inked in all the lines, but haven’t erased the pencil marks yet.


Ribbons should continue under one weave so they look like they continue on. Like above:


Not like this:

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Here I’ve finished inking all the lines and have erased all the pencil marks. From here you can color in the ribbons, or the background, as you like.


I chose to ink in the background on my version. What did you choose to do?

By the way, all through these instructions I’ve used little circles and made nice fat ribbons. Did you figure out that if you used bigger circles, your ribbons would end up a lot thinner? You can do a lot of different plaitworks by just changing the width of your ribbons, and they’ll look very different, even if they’re the same patterns.
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Above is the same block pattern, except I used big circles in the grid. It looks a lot different, doesn’t it? We'll go through this once again, and I’ll show you how it looks all the way through the entire process.


OK, once more to make sure you’ve got the concept down. Above is the same pattern of circles we used before, they’re just bigger here. It’s still a 4 by 3 grid.
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Above, I’ve done the weaving in one direction. Notice that the line touched the tops and bottoms of the circles.


Here above, I’ve turned the paper a quarter turn to the left and finished weaving the other way.
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Here I’ve added the corners and edges, and made sure all the lines continue across the ribbons neatly. Can you see that I’ve had to “fudge” a little on the lines to make them look nice? I had to do that because I drew in the circles by hand, and my grid isn’t quite straight. That’s OK because I think hand drawn lines look the best!


And here it’s finished! I’ve inked all the lines, colored in the background and neatly erased all the pencil marks. Looks pretty nice, don’t you think?
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Now, if you’ve completed these two basic exercises successfully, how about something a little more complicated? This is simply a rectangular grid that’s been curved, and it gets thinner at one end. I followed the same rules for weaving this one as the previous plaits.


Here’s the grid. I’ve already placed some of the center circles.

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Here are the first weaves. I simply turned the paper as I worked my way around.

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Here are all the weaves finished.

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Here are all the weaves and the edges and corners. I haven’t erased the pencil marks yet. Notice how I fudged the lines to make them flow gracefully.

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Here I’ve inked all the lines, erased the pencil marks and colored in the background.

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I’ve used the magic of the computer to reverse the colors. Notice how there are little white spaces in between all the lines now.

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And since this tutorial is focused on engraving, here’s a pendant-shaped plate engraved with a little bit of plaitwork, the original sketch, pattern, large version and life size (the smallest). Don’t look too closely at the shading - I know that could use a little work...

And with that, we’re finished with Celtic Plaitwork. A little practice on your part, and you’ll be ready to move on to Part 2: Celtic Cutwork and Part 3: Celtic Circles. See the examples below. If you thought Plaitwork was fun, Cutwork and Circles is where the real excitement begins!

Celtic Line Drawing Parts 2 and 3 are available for purchase through Steve's new EngravingLessons.com here: http://www.engravinglessons.com/On-D...0Tutorials.htm

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Just a few samples of what you can achieve with these methods and a little creativity!

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