Augury

I was browsing PopURLs.com today, as I usually do, and came across a link today to some high quality versions of constellation artwork. The images in this post come from Alexander Jamieson’s Celestial Atlas, and the site which hosts it also hosts some other quality artwork of a similar style.

In general I really love the woodcut artwork in old books; There’s just something extremely classy about the artwork — It has some medieval sensibilities in its typical flattening of perspective, but has renaissance figures and stylization. Even mediocre artwork of this type has a complexity and craftsmanship that I find intriguing. Usually the quality of images of this sort that you can find on the internet are absolutely garbage, so the nice resolutions on these make them particularly good finds.

Aside from my aesthetic interest, it doesn’t hurt that I’m always on the lookout for artwork for material for running RolePlaying games– I’ve been thinking of trying to run a Mage: The Awakening campaign lately and this sort of imagery is perfect for evoking the sensibility of the Illuminati, the Masons, and other occult groups. My own campaign setting has a degree of this as well, although the constellations would have to be renamed (at the very least) to fit in with the constellations of the setting. A mite obsessive? Well, yes. But then unfortunately I don’t know how to make amazing looking artwork in this style either.