Introduction

You might be interested in celtic knotwork because you saw an illuminated page of  a medieval Bible such as the Book of Kells, which can be found at the Trinity College in Dublin.
 
 












You may like to try and do similar things such as this page I illuminated for an article I wrote in Pour la Science, the French version of Scientific American.
 
 

Pour la Science










Or you'd like to have a tatoo but unfortunately the guy down the street is not as talented as Pat Fish who does very nice things such as the image shown below:
 
 

Pat Fish










In Ireland you can stumble against stones which prove that these patterns are not only the last trendy stuff.

Tomb

CoranBut knots and links have been around for quite a while and if Europeans call them celtic, the people from india know them for longer and the islamic world boasts techniques much more elaborate than the celts.

Hassan II















In this tutorial, you are going to learn, in less than one hour, how to draw such designs.   The technique is summarized in the following picture: A graph (in red) codes a knot, to construct it, you place little crossings on the middle of each edge. Then a simple maze-like procedure allows you to join these little bits of threads into continuous lines that you can smooth. After that, you draw the over/under pattern, using an easy guide. Finally you inflate your knot, like a road in which the previous threads are the yellow line on the middle of the road. And you're done, it's that easy! Please note that I am not concerned here with other celtic designs. You may find excellent books on these, for example the one wrote by Aidan Meehan.

Progression

Cari Buziak treats this sort of things too, as well as mastering knotwork. Cari
Buziak

In fact, it is so easy that a computer can do that, there are several implementations of my methods. The best ones are by Steven Abbott  and Thomas Guionnet. The one by Rita Godfrey is simpler but effective.

Steven Abbott
Thomas Guionnet Rita Godfrey

 
 
 

Next: The basics

 

 
 
 
 

Christian Mercat