Original Painting on Deer SkinAs early as the 24 th century BC, dried animal skin known as parchment has been used tocreate ancient Egyptian scrolls, Biblical books, and famous documents. Parchment is also therevered material that makes up the bulk of the beautiful and highly protected historicIlluminated Medieval Manuscripts. Parchment is a papyrus or paper substitute using animalskin as the medium instead of plant fibers. Parchment also differs from leather and tanned hideby the way in which it is chemically altered, treated and then dried under tension. Oncemodern paper came around, the use for parchment began to dwindle.Parchment is extremely rare to find today, due to the extensive nature of how it is madeand its declining use in modern-day. It is even more extraordinary to find someone who iswilling to keep this lost art alive and transform it into breathtaking works of art.Brittany Sibley is a Texas based, western and southwestern emerging artist specializingin transforming deer skin into parchment. After harvesting a fresh deer skin, she then soaks theskin in a solution that cures the skin. The skin is then cleared of its fur, fleshed, then dried undertension. Once the skin has completely dried out, it is now parchment and ready to be paintedon. Sibley paints wildly colorful images of buffalo, bear, longhorns and other southwesternanimals as well as mountains and landscapes of the southwest regions.