Tangwystl's Marginalia Coloring Book: Redrawn from two decades of her hand-drawn Medieval-Style Scrolls (Tangwystl's Marginalia Coloring Books)

Tangwystl's Marginalia Coloring Book: Redrawn from two decades of her hand-drawn Medieval-Style Scrolls (Tangwystl's Marginalia Coloring Books)

Coloring books are not just for children, although they certainly evoke memories of the joyful innocence of childhood. Just as a child becomes lost in the pleasure of imagination, as she brings the coloring book pictures to life with her crayons, so does an adult bring imagination to life with colored pens or pencils and a coloring book drawn for adults. We all need to escape from the rush and noise of life, and to allow our minds to drift a bit, to help us relax, and to maintain a bit of sanity and peace, before we return to our daily lives. Coloring is both fun and therapeutic.For almost two decades, I drew and painted scrolls, based on an array of medieval models, most of which were used as award certificates in the Society for Creative Anachronism (S.C.A.). This coloring book is a collection redrawn from my original designs, which are close to the original designs. I hope you enjoy coloring my designs as much as I loved drawing and painting the originals.Now, a note about myself, and the creation of these designs. I became legally blind nearly six years ago, so that I now have only a tiny fraction of my former eyesight. As a result, I’m no longer able to draw intricate designs by hand, as I used to do, when I drew and painted marginalia, similar to the art found on the margins of pages in medieval Bibles, prayer books, and books of natural history. Determined not to let visual impairment keep me from creating art, I learned to draw on the computer, using MSPaint, and zooming in to the highest magnification, to draw my designs pixel by pixel. So, I’m able to draw these mandalas on the computer, and offer them to you, to color by hand. I hope you enjoy them.Debbie Barry, known in the Society for Creative Anachronism sometimes as Tangwystl verch Gruffydd ap Cynan, and sometimes as Tangwystl y Deillion verch Gruffydd, was an illuminator of scrolls in the Kingdom of Atlantia and the Middle Kingdom, where she hand-drew and hand-painted hundreds of scroll blanks, most of which were used, over two decades, as frameworks for award certificates for the members of the organization. Her designs were based on, sometimes very closely, and sometimes more freely, a variety of Bibles, prayer books, psalters, and other books and documents originaly drawn and painted in Great Britain, Ireland, France, Italy, and other parts of Europe during the Middle Ages. Debbie gave up her work as an illuminator in 2014, when she lost her eyesight to sudden illness. Today, she is legally blind, but has begun, slowly, to draw again, despite her severely reduced vision.