Keep it secret, and keep it safe!

Hello everyone,

I hope you’re all keeping well. I’ve been at the desk a lot lately, and before the bigger updates arrive I wanted to share a small, very focused one with you.

This is a shorter update than usual, but unusually specific. I hope you enjoy it.

A New Celtic–Tengwar Piece

First up, the newest pictures.

I’ve started work on a new Celtic–Tengwar piece. It’s a gift for one of you, so I’m keeping the details quiet until it’s finished. For now, here are a few progress shots. This one is going to take a long time — I’m planning on packing it with detail.

GeoGebra, the Primer, and the Book

I’ve also been upgrading my GeoGebra skills. This is the software I’ll be using to illustrate the book, and I realised I needed to get much more fluent with it before I start producing the final diagrams.

Simple geometry for the website.

To force myself to learn properly, I built a Geometry Primer for the website. It’s now live. Creating it meant drawing every basic geometric move I use, step by step, in a way that someone seeing these constructions for the first time can follow without confusion. It was a great test of clarity — and a good warm‑up for the book.

You can try the Primer here: https://theartofmichaeltaaffe.com/geometry-primer/ (Opens in a new window)

If you do give it a go, I’d genuinely love to hear how you get on. I want to know if the explanations are clear enough, or if anything needs tightening.

This is a photo of one of the GeoMetra images that I printed off.

Now the News

I’ve drafted a few chapters of the book. (Yes, I know — I’ve been busy, and now my back is broken. I really do need a new chair.)

I’ve chosen Elwë as the first full reconstruction because he’s the simplest device, and that makes him the best place to demonstrate how the method works without getting bogged down in too much detail. Elwë lets me show the full workflow — the geometry, the reasoning, the corrections, the way I test ideas — in a clear, uncluttered way. Once you’ve seen the method applied to Elwë, the way I work makes far more sense.

He’s the cleanest doorway into the rest of the book.

Where the Book Stands

• Chapter 1 — the introduction — is in a solid, readable state.

• Chapter 3 (Elwë) is now print‑ready and shows the method in full flow.

I’ll be sharing both chapters here so you can see how the project is developing. You’ve been supporting me as an artist for a long time — not the book specifically — so it feels right to let you see what your encouragement has helped me grow into.

What’s Next

Next on the desk is Melian’s device. Melian is slightly more delicate and more layered than Elwë, and she lets me build on the lessons learned from working through his chapter. I’ve already completed a full Melian piece — painted and finished — and many of you will remember seeing it. Now I need to go back and recreate it from scratch, this time taking careful notes and explaining each step so that someone else can follow the method and build it themselves. That’s the real challenge: turning something I’ve already made into something I can teach.

Once Melian is complete in this new, fully documented form, the structure of the book will feel even more secure.

A Small Note About the Book

One last thing — and this is just between us.

The book is still very much under wraps. I won’t be talking about it publicly or mentioning it anywhere else until we’re much, much closer to launch. So for now, keep it secret, and keep it safe!

You’re getting this early look because you’ve been supporting me and my work for a long time, not because you signed up for a book project. I appreciate that more than you know.

I’m sharing Chapters 1 and 3 with you through a private page on my website. It isn’t listed anywhere publicly, and there’s no download option — it’s just a quiet place where you can read the chapters in full. You’ll find it here:

➡️

Please keep this link between us — keep it secret, and keep it safe!

A Closing Note

Thank you, as always, for being here. Your support gives me the space — and the confidence — to keep pushing this work forward, even when progress is slow or life gets in the way. I’m grateful for every one of you who takes the time to read these updates and follow along with the strange, winding path this project is taking.

As Sue would say ‘hasta la vista mi amigos’

Mick.