Back to work

After the previous post we spent an evening working on texts, and then got distracted for a few months by vacations, Christmass, events and playing Warhammer online.

Tonight, we're taking stock and trying to get back to work. I will dust of the calligraphy pens and do some practice, and Bertrik will do some gold work to get back into the feel of things.

For the next weeks I will try to finalize texts so it will be easy from then on to just sit down and write without lots of thought...

progres report.

Hoe staan we ervoor met de status van het boek:

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	x				x
2	x			-
jaar 87
1	x	x	x	x	x
2	x	x	x	-	x
3	x	x	x	-	x
4	x	x	x	-	x	x
jaar 88
1
2				-
3		x		-	x	x
4		x		-	x	x
jaar 89
1	x	x	x	x
2	x		x	-
3	x	x	x	-
4	x	x	8/10	-
jaar 90
1		x
2				-
3		x		-
4		x		-	x
jaar 91
1		x
2				-
3		x		-	x	x
4				-	x
jaar 92
1		x
2				-
3				-
4		8/10		-
jaar 93
1	x	x	x
2	x		x	-
3	x	8/10		-
4	x			-
jaar 94
1		x
2				-
3				-	x
4				-
jaar 95
1
2				-
3				-
4				-
jaar 96
1
2				-
3				-
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

93/1: 122 woorden

93/2: 273 woorden

Geeft gemiddelden:

eerste pagina: 125 woorden

tweede pagina: 250 woorden

derde en viede 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. 

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.

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.

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...