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.

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...

Adding gesso

After all the writing I did in the past weeks, there are now several capitals that will need to be gilded, and we found some pages with gesso missing, so we'll be adding gesso to those pages.

Bertrik is making some sugar gesso with dissolved gum arabic as a base, adding about 1 part ground kandijsuiker (sugar cristals) to 3 parts gum arabic.

Update

We're having a computer night, no artwork going on, just digital fiddling around (we made a backup of this blog for instance...).

In previous weeks we did play around with the sugar gesso. We made it with storebought dissolved gum arabic, and it works very well! It gives a very nice domed surface with just one layer, and it sticks much better than the cold recipe, and is easier to apply than the warm recipe. So, we may end up sticking with this one for future projects!

Mistress Bridget warned us about it getting moldy, so we stored it in wet form and dried out in a mussel shell. In both forms it has kept fine, no moldiness, smellines or other funny stuff... Ok, the wet version does smell a little different after a month at room temperature in a jar, but not disgustingly so, and the pigment has settled to the bottom a little. On the jar of gum arabic there is no mention of preservatives used, but there may be some in there.

New gesso recipe

1 part dry gum arabic (powder)

4 parts distilled water

1 part unprocessed sugar;

Reading up on sugar to see what kind of sugar would be most appropriate to use we find out that all the various kinds have had some kind of treatment or added ingredient. We'll just use what we have and see where it gets us...

Dissolve, filter, apply.

We'll try a first experiment with this recipe using pre-dissolved gum arabic, which is what we happen to have.