Category Archives: Brother Hugo and the Bear

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hugo thumb pg 16hugo thumb pg 17The lefthand page has two scenes and two blocks of text. One scene is boxed and the other is a vignette connected to a horizontal offshoot of the box and vertical banner. The righthand page focuses on Hugo and his presentation to the Abbott. The brothers are seen behind the windows of a gallery. The architectural detail helps to fill out the scene and show all the brothers without cluttering up the composition. Brother  Felix, bringing the brothers’ offerings to Hugo, balances the forground.

 

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hugo thumb pg 14hugo thumb pg 15In the lefthand page I return to a boxed in text area like page one. Here the scenes of Hugo working day and night are separated by architectural details with the bear shown prominently for the first time, snuffling. The righthand page has the scene ( of the brothers coming to complain about the snuffling)  separating the two blocks of text. The big “O” has brother Hugo exclaiming , “It’s done!”

 

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hugo thumb pg 6hugo thumb-pg 7The lefthand page uses a very large capital “B” to enclose a scene of the monk and abbott having their conversation. The text will be shaped around the box. My favorite source for this book (and  Come to the Castle) is the Luttrell  psaltery. The artist for that book employed a design where the left hand side of the page has a decorative vertical banner that is connected to the big decorated first letters of the paragraphs. The banner often has horizontal branches of leaves and fanciful items. These form a border around three sides, almost enclosing the text block. The righthand page here uses that design with the borders enclosing a scene and text.

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hugo thumb pg 4hugo thumb pg 5The left hand page is a path through the text. It shows Hugo making his way to the other Monastery. The bear is shown hidden in the shrubbery. A decoration pole is added to the left and connects with the decorated “S”. The right hand page has a design similar to page one with the scene and the text each enclosed by a decorative border. An arrow is drawn to indicate the move of one sentence to the left hand page.

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hugo and the bear pg 2hugo and the bear pg 3This is the first full spread. There are no boxed scenes here. Page two uses the figures of Hugo and the Abbott to enclose the text with a fanciful banner on the bottom. The bear itself is the border on page three. People and Animals were often portrayed in medieval books distorted into the shapes of numbers or letters.

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page 1- not a spread
page 1- not a spread

The first page of the story is not a spread- it starts on the right hand page of the first spread. The sketch shows how I will be enclosing the text and a scene in a decorative border. The taped-in text is too small for the box but that is easily corrected later. I also show how each new paragraph would start with a larger decorated letter.

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The text has been divided into a 32 page format and now I work up sketches for each spread. I photocopy the text and cut it up and then tape it onto a mini version of the spread size. I am using a dimension of about 4″ high by 5 1/4″ long for each page. So each spread is 4″ high by 10 1/2″ long.