things about the Book of Kells I didn't know

My husband is an Art Historian. This often comes in handy, like when he's teaching viking art and talks about the Book of Kells in class, an illuminated manuscript. He went on to describe how he was telling his students about how a lot of the illustration in the book used the same techniques as metalworking at the time. I was like, nu-uh. And he was like, sure, the elements of design that were used in illuminated manuscripts weren't based on any principals of illustration, but rather the inlay and cloisonne work that was done in the much more common practice of metalworking at the time. I never really thought about it in that context before. Totally cool.

But, as you can see below, there's so many similarities between this image:


And these images:

another sketch

sketches and thoughts