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...

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.

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.