Succes

A succesful evening at the start of the Christmas holidays. Bertrik fixed lots of gold, and I did preparatory stuff for the illumination of 1992: polished and fixed the gold in and around the illumination, painted the surrounding bars blue, and practiced shading the sky.

Looking at examples in the 16th century Dutch illumination book and my brand new catalogue of the Master of Catherine of Cleves I learned that the sky should be blue at the top, fading to very light blue or white at the bottom/horizon. I happened to have a copy of Duchess Nerissa's handout on advanced illumination with the examples, and read about limning: using very small brush strokes to do shading. So I made a practice piece, and it works very well! It's possible to go back and forth endlessly fixing things. I started making diagonal strokes, which looks a bit strange. I mixed a few extra shades of blue, and next time I'll do the sky in the illumination.

Painting grass and trees

Laura and Bertrik came over and we worked on painting the natural background in the illumination for 1989. I went back to look for better examples to paint from, and found the Livre de la chasse (c. 1480). We had a 2001 calendar with reproductions from this book in our bookcase, still in plastic, and now we have 12 wonderful reproductions to paint from. Suddenly the puzzle of how to paint the background fell into place.

Laura painted some tests while Bertrik made lots of terra verde paint, adding more black pigment after each batch (4 in total?). This gives a color that compares well to the background in the reproductions. The very dark green in the original also makes sense, since the terra verde is very difficult to work with (sort of slimy and blobby and not very opaque), and adding the black pigment makes it easier.

I toiled on the gold, trying to repair some letters that had partially stuck before. We had added more gesso to the parts that weren't covered, and I tried to put gold on them, but wasn't very succesful. When I tested the new layer of gesso earlier it seemed to work ok, so I was baffled and annoyed. After Laura left I got to fill in the last bits of dark green, so I also got to share in the succes of the evening...

Bertrik, Laura and I worked on the book on Wednesday. The illumination for 1989 is taking shape, with some of the people filled in. Bertrik and I put extra gesso on most of the pages that won't stick. We used the second batch of cold gesso, and added a little extra sugar. We're not sure if the problem is not enough sugar, or the layer of gesso needed to be thicker which might mean that more sugar rises to the surface.

Right now the gold work seems to be the critical thing to work on. The gold sticks to the red ink, so it should be put on before any writing is done (allthough, writing this, I realize I can write the text, and then fill in the capitals after the gold is put on). The gesso needs to harden for a few days, and then I'll try to do some gold work. Then I can continue writing on the introduction, 1988 and the rest of 1989.

Some years I could write text for, but the text needs to be worked on first (1993, which has a bit too much text, and 1994, which has no text at all).

Back to reality

Tonight 3 of us continued work, and hit some snags. First of all we very usefully spent some time discussing the garters we are weaving for November Nights, so we started kind of late.

For some reason the gesso completely refused to take the gold, so the gold work got suspended, hoping it's just the weather, which has been weird the last couple of weeks anyway.

We admired Turmstadt's book, which is beautiful, and a much better example of realistic planning... It's very impressive, and it was actually done in time. It also contains a very nice map of the Shire and its surroundings which we'll take as an example for the map that is planned for our book.

Yvonne did some work on the illumination for year 3 (1989) and I wrote 1/3 page of text for 1989, and we put the pictures in the previous posting, so the night was not completely wasted...

I'm starting to think that the writing might not be a terrible bottleneck, since all the jobs are pretty time consuming. Maybe everything will balance out in work hours. 3 evenings for an illumination, 3 evenings for doing gold on one page, 3 evenings for writing one page?

Shire workshop

We had the gathering on Sunday and flew through the work! 6 people were seated at the table doing red and blue borders and leaves, whitework and lots of gesso. It's really motivating to see some of the pages that are (almost) completely done now. We're sitting here imagining what it will be like to leaf through the book when it's all done...

Klusjes voor de workshop:

• tekst bijwerken/maken
• illuminaties verven
• rechterpagina's naast illuminatie extra regels onderaan toevoegen zodat ze gelijk eindigen met de linkerpagina.
• blokjes blauw/rood verven rond letters en illuminaties
• goudverf om laatste dingetjes af te maken op goudverfpagina's
• blaadjes/balkjes verven
• whitework
• penwerk
• vergulden
• schrijven > mits tekst uitgevogeld is

Word counts

We're counting words and looking how they will fit on the page.

For 1987 the original text has 39 lines of text in Times New Roman on an A4 sheet. After writing the first two pages we calculated that about 13 lines fit on a page (average of a page with illumination and a page with no decoration around it). This meant that we had room for about 54 lines of text, and so we were short of text.

I made up about 5 extra lines, so there's a total of 44 lines now. I've written to the end of page 3 and now have 9,5 lines left over for the last page. That means I can fit about 5 more extra lines on that page if it also fits 13 lines, and there is room for a total of 50 lines, not 54.

Update sept. 3rd: I finished the text for 1987, and changed my mind so many times about whether or not the text would fit, skipping text and then making up extra sentences that I lost track... The last sentence was a new one and ended exactly at the end of the last line...

Next I'm planning to start on 1993 (the year of the Green Knight). For this year we have 55 lines of text in Arial, which means more words on the page then for 1987. After looking at the previous year and how it fit on the page, I'll start out skipping words here and there to shorten the text a little.

Order of work

• gilding
• writing
• gild capitals
• painting colors
• whitework/penwork

Since gilding and writing are the bottlenecks, we won't be able to follow this ideal order of work for many pages, but this is what we aim for.

In preparation for the shire workshop, this means I'll try to do writing on the first pages of each year where there is a large illumination. Also, we'll do as much gilding as possible. And then start on the pages where these things are done, and if/when those are finished, we'll work in a less than ideal order...

Next time: do lots of guilding and writing. Take pictures of foliage pages in different stages (sketch, gesso, gold, paint, paint and whitework).

Also in preparation for the Shire workshop:

• check page numbering > geloven we wel.
• gather shells of paint
• writing page 1 van 1993, 1991, 1992
• gilding
• find pictures that were used for drafting illuminations

Here's a picture of the first page we've been working on the way it looked a few months ago. The illumination was started years ago, and I continued work on it in the past 6 months.

We decided to do some scribing work on the book in stead of sitting at the computer all night like last week. In the end, we spent quite a bit of time sending an email to the list for asking people to help with the book, and telling the kids to get back into bed and on the phone etc..

It's now 21.45 and Bertrik is doing some guilding. It's working unexpectedly well even though he is guilding around a piece that was allready painted years ago. Maybe it's the weather (30 plus C this afternoon and cloudy).

The gesso is the second batch of the cold recipe and has been put on a couple of months ago at least. It seems to give a more even (less bumpy) surface than the warm gesso.

I'm practicing my letters, which is also going better than expected. I might even write some lines on the book itself tonight.

To do next time: write text, do gilding on foliage pages to prepare them for group painting session at the next A&S gathering.

History

We spent the evening working on the text, getting it ready for further editing. Quite a bit got done, lots more left to do...

More of the same: gilding and writing on the book.

Next time - after summer recess - we'll spend an evening putting on gesso together. Or on second thought maybe the time after that. That way we can write some more, so we know where the gold capitals will be and we can fill in some of the capitals.

I've finished the first two pages of year 1 (1987), and used up 27 lines of text. Now there are 13 lines of text left over, so we need to make up at least 10 more...
It seems like all the text we have so far is that much too short, or more, and there are a few years where we have no text at all, or just a few lines. So we've discovered another bottleneck: the text itself.

To make more text, we're planning to use a wiki set up for the Kingdom of Drachenwald: (wiki drachenwald sca org).

The gold sticks well on the newly gilded page, but polishing last week's page is less succesful. The gesso is a bit uneven, in some spots the gold is coming off, and in one corner it even breaks. Maybe the gesso was too thick when Bertrik put it on, making it bumpy.

Weer aan de slag

After a break of several weeks we are back at the scribes' table getting back to the book.

We're thinking about planning, and decided that the goldwork and the writing are most likely to become bottlenecks. We're both tired, but are still going to try and get a little work done on these things. Looking at how far we got in the past months by just making a little progress at a time is hopeful!

The gold is sticking well tonight, is this the weather? We're not sure, it's warm, but is it also humid? Or was humid bad. Anyway, despite feeling jetlaggy, Bertrik is making good progress.

Starting up the writing again is not as hopeful. It feels like I'm back to square one and need to spend a few nights practicing again before I'm up to writing on the actual pages. How useful is that right before the summer recess starts...
How long has it been since I did the last calligraphy? Looks like the middle of April (the 15th is the last reference to actual writing taking place), so no surprise that it's gotten a bit rusty...

Most useful achievement of the evening turns out to be an e-mail to the shire about dance activity in the shire through the year to generate material for the book.

The blank scroll did make it to Sweden, but stayed in the bags unfinished. Event going with two small children leaves little room for things like finishing up a scroll...

rijmbijbel

This is the illuminated page I am working on for the blank scroll competition. In 6 days we are leaving for the event, and just now I looked at the digital image again and discovered a whole layer of shading that didn't come through on the print I've been working from. That combined with a whole line of kids outfits to be completed for the event, makes it less and less likely that the scroll will be done in time for the event...

Below is the link where you can look through the whole book.

http://www.geheugenvannederland.nl/exposities/rijmbijbel/indexNew.php#

Making green paint to match the Rijmbijbel page. In the pigment,

Rijmbijbel can be found here: http://www.geheugenvannederland.nl/exposities/rijmbijbel/indexNew.php#

kalkgroen - chalk green - lego green
smaragd groen - emerald green - nearly the same lego green.
Are these colors part of the medieval palette?

Terra verde with marmble polish and gum arabic. Previously made terra verde paint turned out kind of slimy. We're hoping to make it better by adding marble polish. It seems that it is still a bit slimy, but more opaque than the versions we made before.

Bertrik is doing goldwork on The Book. The warm gesso is polishing quite well. The surface is a bit uneven and in some spots the gold has not stuck. The next page polishes less well. It was meant to have more raised effect, but seems to have turned out too uneven to be polished very well.

I'm working on the illumination for year 1 and a blank scroll for the blank scroll competition at Double Wars.

Colors to be mixed:
-yellow
-green
-skin color

Na DW nadenken over planning voor het boek: stukje schrijven en te vergulden letters intekenen, dan een avond gesso maken en samen gesso opbrengen.

Tonight

Some time in the last week I had a flash of inspiration: how would the red pigment work with added filler (marble polish). Maybe the imitation vermillion that has always seemed to opaque will then suddenly be the perfect red paint. So Bertrik is making some of that now.

I did some work on the book; the illumination for year one is almost done...

Polderslot History

At the Summer is icumen in event Bertrik, Gerulf and Hilde did a lot of digging into old newsletters etc. to gather basic information for the book (what events we did when, who organised them etc.). Now we are emailing back and forth to fill in these bare bones with memories and funny stories. Working on the book itself we didn't get around to.

What are we doing tonight

Bertrik is making a very large batch of permanent rood paint for working on the book in the coming months. What we learned today: it is easier to make small batches.
See the previous post with notes in Dutch on what red we chose (short summary: we're confused).

I'm doing research for writing the next 12 years of history. Next weekend we're holding an event, and one of the activities will be a kind of brainstorm for what we want to record from the last years. I'm looking everyone up in the Drachenwald OP, hoping that the information will jog our memories.

Results of the day: lots of shells with red paint, lots of shells with blue paint, some red painted on year 1, lots of research for the text of later years/planning for the event this weekend done.

Rood

We mengen kleuren voor het boek.

Rood

Om te beginnen gaan we op zoek naar het juiste rood. Op deze site: http://www.eveliennijeboer.nl/kijkje-aardkleuren-pigmenten.htm vinden we het plaatje wat hiernaast staat en deze tekst:

" rood: cadmiumrood: een zeer dekkend rood, een béétje aardachtig van karakter en meer scharlaken dan vermiljoen (zie het schema beneden). Permanent rood: ook meer scharlaken/purperachtig en héél transparant. Een heel mooi rood krijg je door permanent rood (olieverf) over cadmium (tempera) te doen. Het krijgt dan een zwevend soort diepte. Alizarine kraplak is hét echte karmijn, helaas alleen in imitatievorm, die gebruik ik dan ook. Voor een prismatisch vermiljoen kun je vaak heel goed een "oranje" nemen: de meeste oranjes in de handel zijn te donker en wat mij betreft goed als vermiljoen."

Geeft toch niet helemaal genoeg geschiedenis, maar wel een mooi plaatje van de schakeringen van rood.

Als we naar de 16e eeuwse nederlandse manuscripten kijken (tenminste, de reproducties van reproducties daarvan), dan zien we iets wat tussen karmijn en magenta in zit, en iets wat tussen oranje en vermiljoen inzit. Maar de pigmenten die we hebben (inmiddels een indrukwekkende collectie bijna-rood!) zit voor geen van beiden een directe match. En we hebben ook nog niet teruggevonden hoe het moderne pigment zich verhoudt tot het historische.

Voorlopig gaan we voor permanent rood voor de karmijn/magenta kleur en ercolano orange met een beetje kraplak

Baaldag

We zijn allebei gaar. Schrijven wil niet zo goed lukken, dus ga ik proberen wat verder te komen met de miniatuur van jaar 1. Bekijk de voorbeeldpagina's die ik heb gekopieerd en ontdek er van alles op. Verschillende handschriften (gotisch/bastarda), verschillende manieren om hoofdletters te maken in allerlei soorten en maten.

Ik was op zoek naar een voorbeeld voor de achtergrond van de miniatuur, dus een mooi indoor plaatje, en vind van alles.

Bertrik plakt goud op de warme gesso van vorige week, lukt redelijk. Plakt goed, maar de randjes blijven een beetje rafelig. Het gaat wel erg langzaam... Gesso opbrengen gaat een stuk sneller.

Theorie, volgende week te bevestigen: bladgoud laag 1 plakken, week wachten, polijsten dan tweede laag erop. We denken dat we eerder hebben geconcludeerd dat dat het beste werkt.

Ondanks de gaarheid toch goede vooruitgang: twee pagina's goud rond de miniatuur geplakt (de derde wacht nog), en een pagina met goudverf letters en een stuk in de miniatuur gedaan. Ook veel dingen ontdekt op de middeleeuwse voorbeelden. Leuk.

Volgende keer: blauwe, rode en witte verf maken, paar schelpjes van elk voor het geval er mensen op het event ermee willen werken. Goud op de laatste pagina met gesso doen. Verder met schrijven/miniatuur voor jaar 1.

Small steps

Some practice writing capitals and a little web shopping led to two useful insights of the day:

-I'm doing virtually all my calligraphy from secondary sources. If I want my writing to look more like medieval examples, I should probably look at those examples more, because they are quite different from the modern "this is how to write this script" pages. Duh. And I actually realized this before at the scriptorium in Walden years ago, but forgot about it...

-the pen I'm using for The Book now is a brause bandschriftpen 180, 0,75 mm wide. I'm pretty sure that the pen I used originally is a little narrower. I ordered a few spares of the Brause pen here: http://www.kalligrafie.com/webshop/index.html?lang=nl&target=d12.html&lmd=39835.958831

I also ordered a Mitchell square pen nr 5 (the narrowest I have now is nr 4), to see if that is the size I used originally (and will beat myself up if it is, because I continued where I left off 10 years ago (or however long ago it is) with the slightly wider pen, which looks a little different.

The Book

Actual progress on The Book today! Bertrik put warm recipe gesso around some of the illuminations. After a slow start trying to find the right nib I wrote almost two columns of text! As soon as the pictures are reduced enough for the lap top to be able to handle them, we'll add a picture of what the book looked like before tonight...

For next time: buy talens gold paint (gouache, dark nr 803). Practice capitals.

Plan for next time: put gold on the gesso. Do some painting, apply more gesso, write some more...

Dom, dom! Weer vergeten de huidenlijm op te lossen. Plan voor de komende week:

-zondag lijm oplossen en een batch warme gesso maken
-die lijm ook nog proberen te gebruiken in de week erna.
-als er meer scribes komen: blaadjes met gesso doen.
-zo niet, dan misschien alleen dingen voor het event voorbereiden.

Alternative plan: use cold gesso batch 2 on the leaves in the history book.
Alas, notes on how well the gold stuck to this have disappeared a couple of weeks ago. It didn't stick to begin with, but in the end it worked better; but we can't remember what made the difference. Did two or three thin layers of gesso work better than one thick one?
We do remember that the gesso needs to dry out completely before polishing, so put on the gold, wait a week and then polish.

This time the test works fine. The test pieces we did on feb. 17 stick fine. They have a slightly darker outer edge, but by breathing on it well the middle becomes darker as well, and the gold sticks fine. Rubbing it after 15 minutes drying time is not a good idea: about half the gold came off. Bertrik patched it up again and now we'll wait a few days before trying to polish it.

Putting on new gesso on paper. The first try it seems to have gotten much too wet. A dark ring of moisture appears around the painted gesso. What does this do to the sugar in the gesso (enough of this needs to be on the surface for the gesso to stick).

I'm practicing bastarda again. Nib 4 was too wide for the book, I'm now using a thiner one (it does seem to have a number, but it's unreadable by artificial light...).

Polderslot History Book

The Polderslot History Book is a project started 12 years ago (!) and never finished. We are now nearing the Shire's 20th birthday, and thought that would be a good occasion to pick it up again.

The book was started when Her Majesty Eanor was on the throne and asked for the histories of the groups in Drachenwald to be written down. We wrote the text and presented it, but wanted to make a handwritten book of the text as well.

Right now we have all the pages marked out, illuminations for the beginning of each year designed as line drawings (based on photographs), some pages have border decorations started and one half page has written text on it. The style of the book is based on 16th century Dutch illumination. The writing is gothic littera bastarda.

I just measured the written text. The lines are 8mm high. The body of the letters is 4 mm high. Nib no. 4 is probably the right width.

Warm gesso recipe

Hm, some of the notes from last week were not saved, notably, the plans we made for this week. Also we're distracted by dance plans after we attended the wonderful Accademia della danza this weekend. When we finally tried to start a batch of gesso we realized we should have set the hide glue to soak for two hours, and it's too late to start that now, so we'll make some orange paint and practice writing.

Eureka! Totally accidentaly the orange batch makes a pretty nice red that might work for the dragons. Made by adding 1 part of kraplak to 4 parts of ercolano orange. 1/10th kraplak added to ercolano orange still seems a bit too red for the color used in the Rijmbijbel. All of this with gum arabic as the binder. The paints are a little transparent, so in the next batch we'll try to add a bit of marble dust to make it more opaque.

What we can remember from last weeks results is:
-the new burnisher works better for small bits, for larger surfaces the stone works just as well.
-the loose gold does not cover the gesso better than the transfer gold, but it is really annoying to work with!

Plans for next time:
-make warm gesso and use on book
-start writing text in the book
-oranje/rood verven marmerslijp erbij vanwege dekendheid

The recipe from Randy Asplund is this:
Gold is stuck onto the page by laying it on a thick ground called gesso (see fig. 6). I used a gesso recipe based on one which dates from the anonymous Naples MS XII.E.27, known as De Arte Illuminandi. It dates from the end of the 14th c., which makes it later than the style I am emulating, and from a different region, but since the gilding recipe is very simple, and there were so many different recipes, I felt that itís use was justified. This recipe contains hide glue which has been pre melted into water at a 1 part glue to 14 parts water ratio, some dry powdered Armenian Bole, some honey, and some slaked plaster of paris.
I began with a double boiler which I used to melt the hide glue. You never want to boil hide glue, and you reheat it as few times as possible, or it loses adhesiveness. I can store the melted hide glue for a very long time in an airtight jar in the refrigerator. It will keep as a gelatin. I also use the double boiler to warm some honey to the point where it will flow in an eye dropper.
I pre-mix and slab grind 4 parts of slaked plaster with one part of a soft clay called Armenian Bole and store that in another 35mm film jar. It is important to grind on a slab rather than in a mortar because a pestle will not reduce everything to a uniform fineness. Instead of slaked plaster one may use calcium sulphate (CaSO4), chalk, sea shells, egg shells, or even fine marble dust. If you use plaster (which is roasted gypsum dust) it must be slaked or it will not be inert. Slaking is when you add a lot of water to the plaster and agitate it until the plaster has stopped combining wit the water molecules. Then it canít form a structure anymore.
For this recipe I dumped a half tsp. of the pre-mixed plaster/bole into a small ceramic mortar with an equal amount of fluid, melted glue. Then I started by adding ten drops of honey, and ground the material until smooth. The honey makes the resulting gesso slightly flexible, and it allows it to become moist again when breathed upon.
The real trick is to put in just enough honey to make the gesso become slightly tacky when you apply a long, slow, moist breath, but to also be totally dry otherwise. If it doesnít dry completely, you canít burnish it later, and it will smear. The color of the gesso changes from dry to wet. The light dry color will never reveal itself if there is too much honey. It will always be dark from an overabundance of the honeyís dampness. I painted out a test and found I needed more honey, so I added two more drops, tested again, and added one more. The gesso was then painted on in two layers with a brush. It was mounded only high enough to rise above the surface texture of the page. I should have sanded or scraped it smooth after it dried, but it seemed smooth enough, so I skipped that step.

New stuff

Bertrik went shopping and found gold leaf stuff here: http://www.dullerenco.nl/ It's been years since we went around looking for these things, and back then we never found this store, but they have all sorts of stuff we'd only been able to find online, so that's cool!

So, tonight we try out the new burnisher and gold leaf (seperate leaves in stead of transfer stuff).

Dit wordt het blog voor spelen met verf en experimenteren met gesso en bladgoud!

No new batch of gesso today but catching up and putting gold on all the pages we have gesso on, more calligraphy practice and finishing the second dragon.

Polishing the first batch of warm gesso seems to be working pretty well today, better than last week (we started polishing on the same night we put the gold on). A nice mirrorlike surface appears, but under certain angles it looks more red (gesso color) than gold. A second layer (or actually third, the first two having been put on before polishing) helps. So: first layer, polish, second layer.

Make sure no gold is stuck to the paper around the spot you're polishing, because it will get polished onto the paper...

Testing :(

Bertrik is trying to put gold on the batch of gesso we made a couple of weeks ago (second batch of cold gesso). Last week it stuck, now it doesn't! Grrr. Stupid stuff, we're going back to modern glue!

No, not really. But it is frustrating!
Here's what happens: the outer edges look a bit darker to start with, and become shiny when breathed on. The gold sticks to the edges (about 0,5 mm), but not the middle. Small dots and thin lines (which don't really have a "middle") are ok.

Bertrik is also putting gold on a scroll blank that I put warm gesso on at the beginning of this month. At least this sticks... First try of polishing is so so. One dot loses some of its gold (in one spot on the side) and a leaf is ok, but becomes a little shine through.

Meanwhile I'm practicing my calligraphy and feeling the fact that it's been a long time! Every letter has to be just right, on the millimeter, or it looks wrong. Do I have the patience for this. Well, hopefully it will get easier with practice. I'm practicing gothic littera bastarda, which should provide me with a script that my persona(s) can use, and is also the script we used on the Polderslot History book, so I'm getting double value for my practice. Have to watch out for monks' cramp though, after an intensive day at the computer for my daytime job...

Dragons

Dragons

 

This is the design we will be using for the parchment trials. These two I made to practice and test stuff. The gold was put on gum ammoniac, the paints were all made by Bertrik using gum arabic as a binder. They were painted on paper, but you can see the paint cracking a bit on these as well, so that is something we need to look into. Bertrik scanned these when one had the final black outlines done and the other had not, to show the difference.

 

 

 

Dragons

For the parchment test we chose a small design of a dragon from Vienna, Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod 2315, fol 100v, a medical textbook made in Paris around 1280, reproduced in Christopher de Hamel, A History of Illuminated Manuscripts, second edition, Phaidon. The design with the dragon is in the middle of a page with lots of decoration and what looks like a text with a gloss and handwritten notes by different people around it.

I've been using these as practice pieces, and the first are now almost finished.

Once they are scanned, we'll put up scans of the original and my poor reproductions of it...

Testing testing

We're ready to test batch two of the gesso. We made it last week and let it dry out and harden.

To use the gesso we put it in a mussel shell with tap water and let it sit for about 20 minutes until we could dissolve it, stirring with a wooden stick.

We made several tests: one thick layer, dots, one thin layer and two thin layers.

Succes number one: this batch sticks! Whohoo!
Bertrik tried to polish the first dot, which was disappointing, because the gold disappeared... Maybe we need to wait longer between putting the gold on and polishing. After waiting a bit longer the polishing went ok but not great. Most likely, the layer of gold is too thin. Wait and see in next weeks installment of the gesso quest...

What we've been up to so far

So, we've been playing with paint and gesso for about a year now, taking very small steps... Bertrik mostly mixes stuff, and makes test pieces, and I make illuminations to use up the stuff that works.

Projects
At the moment we are working toward two goals: three small illuminated pieces on real parchment as a test of different paints and gesso's and an illuminated book of Polderslot history. This last is a project started 12 years ago (!) and never finished. We are now nearing the Shire's 20th birthday, and thought that would be a good occasion to pick it up again (you'll notice that what was an overly ambitious project to begin with has now more than doubled in size, adding 12 more years to the original 8 or 9 but we're optimistic :))...
Along the way, scroll blanks and small bits of illumination appear as practice pieces and for variation.

Paint
For the paint right now we are using all gum arabic as a binder, since that turned out to be easiest to work with. We mix up a batch and put it in a mussel shell, which is a very convenient container to store it in. It can be re-used just as storebought water colors can by adding water. We tested a little imitation vermillion red paint made with gum arabic on parchment, and it flaked off almost completely. This might be due to the fact that this was unpumiced parchment, but we are a little worried. Along with the gesso experiments, we'll need to experiment with paint binders as well...

Gesso
For the gesso (the ground to apply gold leaf to) we are testing out two recipes, both of which we've almost got working...

Recipe from The Calligrapher's Handbook by Heather Child
16 parts slaked dental grade plaster
6 parts white lead or titanium white (not period but safe, so we're using that)
2 parts sugar; in the last batch we used 4 parts, ground rock candy)
1 part fish glue
a little pigment to see the form; we used 2 parts armenian bole
distilled water (we used 7 parts, which made it quite fluid).

All this needs to be mixed and ground together very well. Then it needs to dry. After it has dried completely once, you can take a little lump, let it sit in a bit of water (just covered), stir it, and use it.

We had some problems with the first batch we made (didn't stick at all and had lumps), so in this batch we used some more sugar and we ground the ingredients much more dilligently than before. The second batch is now drying out, so next week we'll be able to test it.

The other gesso recipe we turned to when the first batch wasn't working. We found it on Randy Asplund's site: http://www.randyasplund.com/browse/tournpg/tipg.1.html
This gesso is quicker than the first recipe, and you can use it right away (no drying step in between).
The trouble we've had with this recipe is that it turns lumpy as soon as it cools down, because the base is hide glue, which is gelatin like, and sets at room temperature. Also, we're clearly too lazy when it comes to grinding, because the first batch of this also had little rocks in it. Now, we've got the gesso in a mussel shell sitting in hot water on a scented oil burner, we've ground it better, and put more water in, so we can make thinner, less blobby layers, and it seems to work better.

So, progress is very slow, but it's there! From now on, I'll try to keep notes of what we do on here, since we just realized during our last visit/advice session with Mistress Oriane that we had almost no record of what we did, which didn't help in trying to work out what we might change to improve things...

Illuminations

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I've been meaning to document some projects on here, and now is the moment to start! So first, here are a couple of illuminated pages intended as sca scroll blanks that I started years ago. At the beginning of last year Bertrik and I started to experiment with making paints and doing illumination again, and these were the first things I picked up again.