Sunday, January 5, 2014

Progression

At Ice Dragon, 2011, I was talked into starting an A&S 50 Challenge. I was starting to get interested in doing illumination and the scribes in my Barony were really overworked. At Ice Dragon, the Barony normally hands out a large number of scrolls: Rattan winner; rapier winner; Baron's Choice for A&S, Baroness's Choice, King's Choice, Queen's Choice, Prince's Choice, Princess's Choice, Pentathlon 3rd place winner, 2nd place winner and overall winner. Plus we keep some scrolls handy for best youth entry, Youth Combat winner and, most years, we hand out scrolls for the A&S Pentathlon category winners. And that's not including Baronial awards. There have been a few years where the Barony handed out 40 to 50 scrolls in Baronial court. Kingdom court had its share of scrolls, as well.

That is a lot of work. I figured, at the time, that if I could learn to do some basic illumination, I could do some of the low level work and give the better scribes some breathing room. Ease their load, as it were. I had already done a few scrolls for tournaments that I ran and I was not only getting into it, but was encouraged to do more. So, I was talked into doing 50 scroll blanks by 2015. I could do that. I could trace and I could color between the lines.

If anyone tells you that making scroll blanks is too hard, refer them to me. It is a challenge, but you don't have to be an master artist to it. I have little artistic talent and I do designs that are at my level of skill. I can't draw freehand, but that's okay: I have a lightbox and I can trace. If I can do it, anyone can.

I needed to E-mail a few things to our Kingdom Chronicler and while I was looking for an image, I saw an opportunity to document how I have progressed since I started. My flikr page (http://www.flickr.com/photos/calebreynolds/) and my brag book are in chronological order, so I can flip through both and see what I have learned. But, let me show you how my technique has improved over the last few years. By the way, doing so many pieces of illumination does build up one's skill.



This is the sample image: I have no clue where I found it and I did not give it a file name that indicated its source. I pulled it off of the web to use in a newsletter I was editor of.


This first image is a local A&S award I did sometime in 2009 or 2010. I was so proud of this scroll, when I made it. But, as John Cleese has said, one must reach a certain level of skill to known when one is terrible at something. This piece was done on Bristol 140# hot press cotton paper using water based acrylic paints. The gold of the 'T' was made using oil based gold paint. As you can see, I had no technique. My method was to trace the image using a lightbox and then fill in each section with a solid color. There was no attempt of shading, just to get a thick enough layer of paint to cover the paper. The blotching of the blue and green were caused by putting too much paint on the paper, and not evenly. I had no clue on how to blend the paint together and just slapped more paint atop the previous layer, then used black paint to outline everything and add detail.



Here is the second attempt with the same image. This scroll was completed 2/24/12 and was done on Arches 100% cotton, 140# hot-press watercolor paper using Savoir Faire gouache from Hyatts. The gouache was superior to the other paint, but I didn't get the concept of thin coats. I was still putting too much paint on the paper. I was still putting one layer atop another to get a solid finish and it worked better than the first attempt, but still not great. Instead of black paint, I used a black Micron pen to ink in the lines. The fine pens worked much better than a brush to get an even line exactly where I wanted it. It was at this point that I stated experimenting with whitework, although I had no clue what I was supposed to do with it. I was just using black and white lines willy-nilly.



A year later (4/14/13) I used the same initial again, this time I had taken some classes and had an inkling [1] of a clue of what to do. I had upgraded my paints to Reeves gouache for colors and Holbein for the gold. The Reeves mixed much better in water than the Savoir Faire and re-hydrated much better, when dried in the tray. The Holbein gold was far superior to the oil based paint I was using, not only was it easier to clean, but it was a lot shinier; closer to gold leaf than the oil based paint ever looked. I had changed my technique once I learned how to properly use the gouache. I put the gold on thick, using 3 or 4 layers and making it lumpy. The uneven surface reflected more light and in more directions and looked more like gold leaf (which I am attempted to learn how to apply) from a distance.

The Reeves colors I applied thin. Very, very thin. The hardest part of learning how to do this was understanding that the paint does not have to be applied as if I were painting my living room. I didn't need to seal the paper with pigment, I just needed to apply a little bit of paint and the paper would absorb what it needed. So, watering the paint down and applying 2 or 3 thin coats gave me a much better look than one thick layer. I was also taught to apply one thin layer and let it dry on the paper and thicken in the tray. Then apply the slightly thicker, and darker, pigment from the right-hand side, stopping short of the left-hand side of the object. Then doing it again to give a gradated color that can simulate natural shading. (I had a nice conversation at Pennsic about this method a couple of years ago. Mistress I-Can't-Remember-Her-Name told me to assume that there is a light source come from the upper left hand corner of the page and to paint such that lighter shades are closest to that corner and the darkest the farther away you get. Then use a little white on the left-hand edges and black on the right-hand edges to bring out the highlights and shadows a natural light source would bring out.

In this 3rd attempt, I was still learning how to do that type of shading, but I had learned enough in between the two images to start to figure out what I was doing wrong. In this attempt, I put just enough detail into the chair and the table so that a viewer could figure out what they were and concentrated on the scribe and the background. I did not use any pigment on the scribes skin because I had discovered that that was quite common in medieval manuscript: letting the natural color of the parchment come through as skin. Besides, I really liked how the bright white contrasted with the background and garb.

Instead of leaving the background a solid color, as in the first two attempts, I chose to try diapering. Now, I had printed up a page of black and white checker patterns. After I had traced the main image, I slipped the checker pattern under the page and traced the lines for the background. I then marked out the black checks (which ended up as the green boxes), inked the lines, erased the pencil lines and filled with paint. Much, much easier than using rulers, T-squares and triangles.

Although, as I write this, I noticed that the 'T' in the original image, and in two of my copies, is at the right-hand side of the page. What kind of scribe is this? Where would the text go? The 'T' should have been on the left hand side of the page. And I know that because I have also learned about margins and positioning.

In any case; three attempts at the same image over a few years and I have learned enough in that time to know that I am improving and what mistakes I was (and still am) making. I hope that this might encourage other to try illumination on their own. It is not that difficult to do and if you stick with images within your skill level, you can make some really nice pieces of art.

[1] Inkling! That was a joke, son!