I have never been much for flourishes, as they distract from the form of the letters and belong too solidly to the past. But in this project, flourishes serve as fanfares to some of the greatest paintings in the world. Here I developed a rather unconventional style of flourish related to the strapwork decorations of 17th century architecture. And I will reveal a secret: knowing it would be very difficult to match the colors of the calligraphy to that of the paintings, I did all the writing in watered down black ink, scanned the work in as grayscale and then added the colors in Photoshop. The files for this immense book (page size 50 x 70cm vertical) were a GB or more, which made alterations difficult and time-consuming. I even had to buy a new external hard drive to cope with all the new data!