Voynich Floral Spirals

Taken from Wikipedia:

The Voynich manuscript is a handwritten book thought to have been written in the early^[1] 15th century and comprising about 240 vellum pages,^{[notes 1]} most with illustrations. The author, script, and language remain unknown: for these reasons it has been described as “the world’s most mysterious manuscript”.^[2]

Generally presumed to be some kind of ciphertext, the Voynich manuscript has been studied by many professional and amateur cryptographers, including American and British codebreakers from both World War I and World War II. Yet it has defied all decipherment attempts, becoming a historical cryptology cause célèbre. The mystery surrounding it has excited the popular imagination, making the manuscript a subject of both fanciful theories and novels: numerous possible authors have been suggested for it.

In the end, this manuscript dates to the 1500s. I think the imagery is unique because of its out-of-time creativity and its mystery.

If these images were scanned/redrawn at a larger scale, and printed as a wall mural, the mystery would become larger than life, and become a puzzle to be solved! I can’t think of a better dining room /restaurant topic to discuss than these insane/genius rambings.

Take a look at some of the illustrations:

Voynich_Manuscript Fold Out

Women in Green Bath Incubator?

Voynich Mural Plants and Leaves

See a large collection of Voynich JPGS here.

What would it take turn Voynich images into pleasing murals?

Being that the images are hand drawn on paper dated to the 16th century, we’re not starting out with a lot of detail.  So, the scans and images that are generally available now would likely be the best we’re going to get.  The murals would be best created if the various illustrations were composited together and the ‘text’ removed.  Because the purpose is to create a mysterious dinner topic, and not pure research — some image touch ups, and simplifications could be included.

Depending on the room size, I would guess about 2 hours per linear foot of wall space would be required to design a mural/murals.  Would I do it for a customer? Gladly!!

She created a series of blog posts outlining her work for Assabet River National Wildlife Refuge- the mural that I like is the night time mural.  Very dark in its design, the mural is installed with spotlights on specific elements of the piece- increasing the highlight of target areas – in this case, night animals.  At the link you can see all the details close up.

Night Time Mural of Assabet River Wildlife

Often times you have to work around light, audio, plumbing and security features of a wall when considering a wall mural- but in this case she uses light, and (if you read) sound to augment and bring the mural to life.

Kudos to Barbara.

Given, these murals were installed at a music hall in Brooklyn, and have another theme – which is authoritarian regime, but still – its all how you want to see it, and what you WANT to see opened at Christmas – NOT what you actually get.

Seasonal Wall Graphic

If you want a wall graphic to be installed for just one season, consider printing on regular wall paper and having a wall paper hanger install the mural for you in a short afternoon.  A seasonal, short term wall graphic can act as a focal point for other decorations – depending on the target holiday.

If you’ve ever walked some of the indoor malls in Vegas, especially Cesar’s, you can see well done sky murals- all one color blue  with clouds painted over top.  You can get this same look and feel. (OK ok, maybe I’m dating myself- because I’ve not walked THAT particular mall in over a decade and not sure if its there).

When developing a mural intended for a ceiling, its certainly tempting to grab the freest sky image you can from any of the image sites, or, possibly cheaper, just take a picture yourself.  The problem with this method is the variation of the sky color from east to west, or north to south.

While this may not seem to be a ‘big deal’ it can make your ceiling mural look washed out, and, depending on the lighting, very unnatural.  It is my suggestion to either find the most atonal image possible for a sky, or replace the blue sky component altogether.   Depending on the amount of time you want to spend on it, and the desired clouds, you output/color/whispiness  quality can vary.

Take one from the opulence of Cesar, and start with a fixed blue sky, and go from there.

Vectored, Fleur-Like patterns are certainly popular right now.  Taking a fleur that you might see in the most intricate designs of a wallcovering pattern and enlarging it is relevant to today’s wide format graphic design, but it is not all that creative.  Let’s try something new.

For this mural, sized 14,400 x 7,200, I have painted over a fleur-ey tree that I had lying around with the same style as the Thinking Man from the previous image created.  The result is an imperfect, exciting pearl of an image. The bubbly effects, coupled with the organic nature of the subject matter is fun, exciting, and new.

This image is highly layered, and can be edited for color, size, and composition.

ZOOMED IN:

The image is 14,400 pixels wide by 7,200 pixels tall.  Colors can be changed, as well as background, what the man is looking towards.

As always, LateralArt is happy to custom design to your dimensions and specific design needs.

CLOSEUP SHOT:

Early 20th Century Newspaper Clipping

Here you can see the dot pattern

There is very little that can be done to clean up this type of print/image for wide format, or mural printing.  For a recent project, I delivered the below.  I changed the color to a crisper, non-sepia tone color, I deleted the background and replaced it with a consistent dot pattern background that mimics the print dot size, and I adjusted dot color in the FULL black areas.  Optionally, I could have hired a portrait artist to paint over the image (I keep a plethora of designers with varied skills close by), but that was not an acceptable reproduction method for the customer.

Clean up the image and standardize the background

The interior design firms that I often work with go through the effort of matching this wall surface treatment, with that floor surface treatment, to that fabric, etc… but TEO JASMIN has made the effort to create their own surface treatment by usiing imagery USUALLY suited for wall murals as the surfaces of not simply wall art, but fabrics and furniture.

I do believe that their use of digital printing makes the objects that are found in a room, whether it be a chair, a pillow, or a throw, as something to be stared at.

Can’t you see having your next party and having your throw pillows be the topic of discussion? Ha!

A spectacular “cosmic eye” has been photographed in space by a telescope in Chile, showing a distant nebula in which sunlike stars are burning themselves out.

The image of the Helix nebula, which lies 700 light years away in the constellation Aquarius, was captured with the Wide Field Imager instrument at the La Silla Observatory high above the Atacama Desert.

Already amazing in color and already resembling the human eye, when duplicated, it has an incredible resemblance to the human face.

This very high resolution image would be excellent for police stations, or anywhere else where big brother may be watching. Then again, maybe it’s better for a church. This image can be produced at up to 10′ high, by up to 40′ in width.

• What if you have to provide a mural that runs around all four sides of a room, and has to match up perfectly from starting edge to final edge?
• What if you have to provide 4 sides of an interior wall and have the beginning and end of the mural match up?

This isn’t your momma’s dainty flower design that you can hack together in the corner above the door.  You have to be dead on to please the customer.

What do you do?

Measure, Measure, Measure

This type of project cannot be done with drawings, it has to be performed with real live measurements of the final wall finish.

For each of the four (or more) walls

• Measure the breadth on the top
• Measure the breadth on the bottom

All of these measurements should be accurate to the quarter inch or better.

Do the Math

OK, here is the hard part.  You have to come up with the exact right width of a mural that takes into account variations in the plumb of the wall, and variations in height and width for each wall.

This sounds like it will be hard, but there is a simple fact that makes it not so bad- you are building a mural that starts and stops at the same point- so there IS a correct answer.

1. Add up the breadth on the top of each wall
2. Add up the breadth on the bottom of each wall
3. Determine which is larger- this is your overall mural width.

With an over all width, you figure your height based on your measurements, and you have your mural size.  IS this a perfect solution?  Unfortunately it is only as perfect as the plumb of the wall- and your print will be off by the plumb difference- that’s just a fact.  We’re doing the best we can here.

Special Bleed

Although it’s a good guess, When wrapping a room, The bleed on your starting edge is not exactly the image from the END of your image, and vice versa.  If the print does not match up perfectly, you will have a portion of the image that is duplicated.

Instead, determine a blurry, smeared, or ‘blank’ portion of the image that has a 1/4″ repeat, or constant image.  THIS should be the bleed.  Although the intention is to cut off ALL of this bleed, matching starting edge and final edge should be easy if they are the exact same pattern.

These are the techniques that we here at Lateral Art offer to our customers in producing accurate, right on graphics that no end customer would complain about.