Ex Libras II
“From the Library of” Ink Imitation Bookplate
For this UC Davis design project, the other students and I were asked to create a bookplate with the words “Ex Libras,” which is Latin for “From the Library of,” as well as our names all based on a pre-established list of iconic visualizations. I chose to base my second bookplate on Ars Moriendi which is a 15th-century illustration taken out of a graphic book called “The Art of Dying” in Latin. The book is “a manual for dying well.”
I think the name of the book alone stood out to me, as western civilization has a tendency to look at dying as a sad or gory event, but the title—with the assumption that art is normally seen as breath-taking and exquisite—reminded me that if one lives well, dying can be a beautiful thing. An aspect of the piece itself that caught my attention was not only the contrast of the demons and saints but how closely they interacted around the dying individual. I wanted to give my own interpretation of the interaction between good and evil using a snake and a butterfly. Even though I wanted the snake to represent the demons and the butterfly to represent the saints, there are layers to the representations and similarly to western civilization’s view on dying, snakes are viewed as something to be afraid of, but just like how Ars Moriendi implies that dying can be graceful, I wanted to show that with the snake. I placed the reptile in a seemingly docile position with its mouth closed looking at a crown, which is representative of temptation in both my interpretation and the original illustration. I believe that it’s softly curved body shows elegance and grace, juxtaposed to the undeniable fact that it can be a deadly creature. Another visual strategy that was used in the original piece was hatching in order to give the piece dimension and depth. I wanted to stay true to this technique so I too used hatching when adding shadows. The ribbons featuring black lettering were also an aspect that I enjoyed from the original piece, so I used my own stylized ribbons to highlight the text: “Ex Libras Emily” in my own version.
Ink and Paper
One quality scan, 10” x 10”