unfinished illuminations

So we're making good use of the lockdown working along quite happily on all the border decorations and whitework, but there are also a number of illuminations still to be done. Some are half finished, and we're not quite sure anymore who was working on which one. So all the unfinished ones are below, so hopefully people can check them out and let us know if there is one they were working on, and if they want to finish it themselves. 

Paints used

 For the borders we used:

Green - terra verde - zinc white nr 2 (Bertrik made a series of shells starting with pure terra verde and adding zinc white with little bits at a time. So this is the shell with two little bits of white added. Very scientific :)).

Blue - ultramarine

Red - permanent red

For the black outlines and squiggles I'm using a Staedtler pigment liner 0.1, after experimenting a bit with metal pens.

For the gold we're using the most simple gesso made with gum arabic with icing sugar (poedersuiker) and a little red bolus pigment.

Writing

 It took a bit of practice and finally some courage to start writing text again. Below are some pictures of how my bastarde evolved in the past 8 years or so, some practice pieces finding the right pen nib and getting closer to the style used in the book. Looking closely at the pages already written, there are differences in style there too of course, and I may tweak it a bit more as I get going again. For now, I think I got pretty close to what I was doing before, allthough it still seems as though the pen I used was slightly wider (see the first couple of lines on the new page).

Existing page of the book

Recent bastarda practice piece

Practice piece for writing in the book again

The first writing in the book again. The first 5 lines were already there, and you can see the difference if you know, but I think it is not too obvious.

Page two and other progress

 So, what did we get done this week:

- Bertrik made a great many new shells of fresh paint in different colors.

- we realised that in some years page two had some decoration between the columns, but not in others. We got together one afternoon and evening, and Bertrik gilded all the hearts, and I did the penwork. All years are done now! I'm adding some pictures showing the practice pieces, order of drawing the little flower and the result on the pages.

- worked on the texts, there is a document with the correct number of words for every year now, Bertrik is doing a final check.

- did some greenwork on pages with leaves. Comparing with the penwork I did on the middle columns for page 2, I think in the future I will draw the little green leaves with pen first, and then fill them in with paint, not the other way around...

- did some checks with different nibs. I couldn't figure out why the writing with my Mitchell nr 5 didn't look right, until I checked it by daylight, and it turns out that I was using a nr 4. Well, that cleared up that mystery...

Back

 After a long long break we have dusted off the pages of the History Book and decided to ignore the mockery of the young adults who were not even born when we started this project and have a go at it again (I won't use the word finish!). We're actually pretty pleased with how it looks and pleasantly surprised at how far we got before life and other projects took precedence.

Key info for getting back to work:

Words per year: 675

Nib to use: Mitchell nr 5 pen

Order of work: 

1. 1. gilding
2. 2. writing
3. 3. gild capitals
4. 4. paint colors
5. 5. whitework/greenwork
6. 6. penwork

Text to be found in google docs but also on wiki.

Penwork and leaves

Yesterday I did the first green leaves and serious penwork, and I'm quite content with the first try. I did realize when I started drawing the black lines around the green leaves that they are shaped up side down, with the pointed bit at the end of the leave instead of the start, so that will take a bit of practice. The line of penned flowers on the left side of the right hand page turned out rather well I think.

I used the terra verde paint, and it worked better than expected, probably because these are just small shapes, and maybe also because the paint is fairly fresh (made last week).

Hopefully I will be able to finish the penwork next week, and then we'll have reached a milestone, the first page that is completely finished! Wow.

Gathering speed

We're slowly getting back into the work on the book. First we spent some time on the planning of an event for next year, and then we made some small steps to get going again.

Bertrik applied some gum arabic to some narrow strips of gesso that the gold wouldn't stick to, and that is working well. It might be a good solution to some of the other bits that we've had trouble with in the past.

I practiced letters, and worked out that I've been writing with a Mitchell nr 5 pen, and that I need to order some spares of those. They are actually wider than the Brause .75 mm, not narrower as I wrote in 2009.

We also determined that page 3 and 4 of 1993 have not been written yet, but we did rewrite the text to fit the two pages that are left (309 words). So in the next few days I can practice some more, and then I can get started on the third page of 1993, and making red capitals on the second page.

Word Count

Below is a list of the chapters of the book, followed by the number of words.

The number of words needed is 675 for a full chapter. The intro is on two pages and needs 375 words.

Intro - 339 (needs 375).
1987 - already written in the book, not counted
1988 - 561
1989 - already written in the book, not counted
1990 - 674
1991 - 484
1992 - 545
1993 - already written in the book, not counted (checken en tabel bijwerken)
1994 - 814, but not final text (parts in Dutch etc.)
1995 - 507
1996 - 602

Tabel

The old progress report seems stuck in time so I can't edit it anymore. Hopefully this version will work.

progres report.

Een tabel die bijhoudt hoe ver we zijn met het maken van het boek.
De inhoud van de cellen geeft aan wanneer dit onderdeel is afgerond.
(x: geeft aan was of voordat we begonnen met dit bij te houden).

pag	text af	goud	geschrvn	illum	borders	white
Titelpagina
1	x
Inleiding
1	12/11
2	12/11			-
jaar 87
1	x	x	x	x
2	x	x	x	-
3	x	x	x	-
4	x	x	x	-	7/12	x
jaar 88
1	12/11	6/12	12/11
2	12/11	1/12	1/12	-
3	12/11	x	1/12	-		x
4	12/11	x	1/12	-	x	x
jaar 89
1	x	x	x	x	x
2	x	-	x	-
3	x	x	x	-
4	x	1/12	8/10	-
jaar 90
1	x	x	12/11		-
2	x	-	1/12	-
3	x			-
4	x	x		-
jaar 91
1	3-12	x	3/12		-
2	3-12	4/12	4/12	-
3	3-12	x	4/12	-		x
4	3-12			-
jaar 92
1	1/12	x	3/12	2/12	-
2	1/12	3/12	3/12	-
3	1/12	11/11	3/12	-
4	1/12	8/10	3/12	-
jaar 93
1	x	x	x		-
2	x	2/12	x	-
3	x	8/10	12/11	-
4	x	11/11	2/12	-
jaar 94
1		x			-
2		-		-
3				-
4				-
jaar 95
1		3/12			-
2		-		-
3				-
4		2/12		-
jaar 96
1		3/12			-
2		-		-
3		2/12		-
4				-

Woorden telling op de reeds geschreven pagina's:

87/1: 133 woorden

87/2: 234 woorden

87/3: 141 woorden

87/4: 138 woorden

89/1: 121 woorden

89/2: 258 woorden

89/3: 162 woorden
92/1: 135

93/1: 122 woorden

93/2: 273 woorden

Geeft gemiddelden:

eerste pagina: 125 woorden

tweede pagina: 250 woorden

derde en vierde pagina: 150 woorden

Waaruit dus volgt dat een gemiddeld jaardocument zo om en nabij: 675 woorden zou moeten bevatten.
Er volgt een tellling op de concept texten.

Later geschreven pagina's woordentelling:

88/1: 106
88/2: 234
88/3: 155
1990/1: 99
90/2: 237 (word count van de computer, tijdens het schrijven best veel woorden geschrapt)

Designing illuminations for 1988 and 1995

Tonight we will try to use the material we gathered last week to draw the last two remaining illuminations for the book. We thought we had three to go, but it turns out there is a really nice picture of the two then - new pavillions and the trebouchet Claudwick built at Double Wars for 1996.

Left to do are 1988: a flood (or flooded tents) and 1995: dancers.

Homework for the coming weeks:

• finish the text for all the years that have not been inked yet, making sure the wordcount is ok
• copy illumination designs into the book in pencil when there is daylight...

Working on content

As promised we are working on finishing the content for the book. Bertrik is doing a word count to see which years still need work done on the text.

I'm looking at the years that we don't have an illumination designed for yet, and what we want to do for those years:

1988 - Polderslaughter got seriously rained out - a picture of a flood, based loosely on this lovely painting of the St Elisabeth flood of the early 15th ct.

1995 - dancing, look at dancers on the Sienna mural and adapt to look like shire members

1996 - a picture of a trebouchet and tent, based on photo's of Double Wars of that year. Also use the cart from the Macieowski Bible, since that was on the DW T-shirts we made.

Pictures of illumination in progress

Laura worked on the group picture with greenery, and made some lovely whitework. I finished year one (except for the faces, we asked in Jehan as our facepainting expert for those), and I started on the group picture at the castle several years later. In this picture I had finished the sky, using the method described a few posts earlier.

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).

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...

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.

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.