**Now that this has been finally given I can post this article! I only started writing this article 6 months ago! Stupid COVID…*
This particular scroll was one that I assigned myself. We didn’t have anything in the inventory of blanks on hand that I thought would fit for Isabelle and her Sable Bear. I just happened across a find in my Pinterest feed (yes, I know that’s dangerous) that I thought would be fun to customize.
To provide a bit more background: the Sable Bear is the Barony of Bergental’s award for martial activities. The Sable Bear can be awrded for powress in any of the following fields: heavy list, rapier, thrown weapons, archery, siege, etc.
The Exemplar
The exemplar that I found and chose to use is a page from a psalter written at the behest of St. Gall Abbot Ulrich Rösch sometime between 1463 and 1491. It’s vastly different from what I’ve done before and the potential for personalization really made me excited.
The Layout
The current size of this page is 2.3 x 32.5-33.5 cm (16.65 x 12.8-13.19 inches). I say current, because it looks to me as if at some point the top was trimmed as a few of the top illuminations go clear off the page and several of the acanthus leaves are missing from that section.
The illuminated B takes up a great deal of space and, while I’m not adding the musical notes at the beginning, my layout will be squished somewhat if I try to fit it on my usually 8×11 inch parchment. Especially when I add my half inch margin all the way around to allow for framing. In addition, I wanted to customize this to Isabelle by changing the vertical gold line to her sword and somewhere I need to add a sable bear rampant somewhere.
Basing Design on a Featured Item
I decided to sketch out the sword first to see how the acanthus leaves would work around it. When I was happy with the sketched version of the sword, I went over it with a micron pen to make sure I didn’t accidentally erase parts of it while I try to figure out the rest of the layout.
The pencil circles and initial block laid out this way, convinced me that doing the scroll in a landscape orientation would be the best idea. I had no faith in being able to reproduce the sword again, so I took it over to my handy dandy photocopier so that I would be able to slip the copy under the pergemenata to trace. Work smarter, not harder right?
I ended up going with an 11×14 inch piece of the pergemenata. The addition of the sword to the existing illumination would have left very little to no space in a vertical layout on my usual sheet of 8×11 pergemenata. I did try but I knew my calligrapher would kill me. I think that the horizontal layout will really look amazing once it’s done as well. I’m still not entirely sure where the sable bear will end up. Inside the initial? Standing on a quillion of the sword? I guess we will see later!
Putting Pencil and Paint to Perg
The drafting of the scroll came together really quickly, thanks to being able to trace the sword. Day 2 is when I started putting down the base layers of paint. The picture at the right was my stopping point for day 2.
This was my first time working with silver and not gold. Given that it’s the same kind of paint as the gold I have been using lately (Coliro pearl colors) but I soon came to the conclusion that wouldn’t be able to do shading or highlights with straight black or white paint as it would look rather odd. Instead I played with adding black and white to the base silver so for shading and highlights. It took a bit of experimentation on some scrap paper but the results make me happy, so I call it a win.
You’ll notice that I haven’t touched the horizontal line yet. I have this irrational fear of doing something new and so far out of my comfort zone. I want to complete the vertical so in case I screw up I won’t have to redo absolutely everything.
Day 3 – Highlights and Shadows
Day 3 I began to put in the highlights and shadows. I worked on this for about 3 hours on day 3 and was able to get the vertical section nearly complete. Well, complete. I shouldn’t touch it anymore but that’s no guarantee that I won’t.
I’m particularly in love with the bottom half of the acanthus leaves. I finally am getting the thin lines, thanks to the miniature painting size 000 paintbrushes that were recommended to my by a friend. Yay! Sometimes it’s the little things in life. I’m also quite happy with how the shading turned out. It’s something that I struggle with and I’m just so pleased with my own progress on that front.
I was staring at the paper for a while after I finished most of the vertical acanthus leaves and couldn’t help but think that I was forgetting something. That something was the center line on the sword. The sword looked really flat without it. I also just noticed that I forgot one of the little gold flare type flowers in the detail picture. OOPS! It’s important to have the second and third checks! But I’m sill totally pleased as punch with how this is coming out!
Horizontal Line Start (Day 4)
Time to fill out the top line! Today I worked on sketching out the acanthus leaves that will go across the top of the scroll. Ideally I would have liked to stick with as much of the original leaf design as possible. Unfortunately, due to the change of the paper orientation, that wasn’t going to work. The original layout would have ended about 3-4 inches before I where I wanted it to. I had to alter and add more leaves to stretch across the top line.
Tricky Going
The top line did not come out as even as the vertical. It has more of the organic look about it. I also had an oopsie when painting in the red leaf in the center. My paintbrush decided to go *phwip* and I had to use my exacto knife to straighten it out and tidy it up.
Color Puzzle
The other tricky part about the top line was how to deal with the colors. Because the line is longer than the original I basically had to have a repeat in there to make it stretch the length I wanted it to.
For the first half of the top row I followed the exemplar as close as possible. After the blue leaf in the middle I kind of had to make up the color pairings as I went. Keeping with the exemplar, I tried to match the color pairings from the vertical leaves. This worked fine except in a couple of cases where the colors would have only repeated or become too monotonous.
Day 5 – Top Row Details
The shading and veins was trickier than planned. Because I extended the pattern and altered the order of the base colors the closer I got to the right-hand side, I also ended up having to change the shading and vein colors a little. I tried to replicate the color combinations from the vertical set of vines as and only do minor substitutions when possible. I think that I succeded overall as there are no blue vines with blue shading, etc.
The Inital & Bear (Days 6 & 7)
I’m not going to lie, the letter intimidated me a little. Some of the leaves are small and the shading was tiny in some spots. I traced the main curves of the letter and the star in the center then freehanded most of the leaves. Unfortunately this is one of the instances of “just get it done” and no pictures were taken of it in progress. So for your perusal I have below a before and after side by side comparison.
I think that the letter turned out rather well, especially considering how worried I was over the white work and shading. I still need to work on painting straight lines. They aren’t as straight as I would like.
The actual sable bear was a total trace. I can’t draw animals for beans. Thank God for the Book of Traceable Heraldic Art that has been put together by Mathghamhain Ua Ruadháin. Otherwise you would have a black square with teeth much like #teambluesquare. (You try drawing heraldic tigers…PITA)
Project Completion
Ta-da! I’m quite please with the final product as far as my art is concerned. There are few things I could have done better like straighter lines and I’m not that fond of the pink, I think it came out a bit too pink. Now I just hand it off to the calligrapher and await for the final results! The completed article will be posted in the Art Gallery when it’s in the recipient’s hands!
