How to Diaper a Scroll

No, not that kind of diaper.

One of the easiest ways of making a scroll pretty is to add diapering. Diapering is the checker-board pattern seen on manuscripts, usually as a background to a figure. They can involve gold, such as:

Or plain colors:

Or a mix of colors and patterns:

Diapering can be as simple or as complicated as you wish to make it. Even the most basic of patterns can liven an image that would normally have a blank back ground:

 

Simple or complex patterns, it is simply a matter of layout and organization. For this example I am going to show you how to do a three color, square pattern. This technique can be modified for other shapes and patterns. You will need a lightbox and a straight-edge for this method. The lightbox is not a requirement, but it does make things easier. First find an image, trace it onto your paper and ink it. Inking the image before the diapering will make it easier down the road.

Next, get a print out of a checkerboard pattern. If you use a graphics program, like Picture Publisher, Photoshop, Paint.net, PaintShop Pro, you can create a box and fill it with a pattern of the size that you wish. 

Secure the pattern under your image and put it back on the lightbox. Use the straight-edge to mark your lines.

Line up the top edge of the boxes with the top border and let the boxes fall where they lay. You can orientate from the bottom edge or from either side, but I think that it looks better when aligned from the top.  It might be that I am accustomed to viewing from top to bottom. You are the artist: align it however you wish. When complete, you will have pencil lines on top of the ink lines. Any lines that you drew in the wrong places can easily be erased. If you look in the boat, under the axes, you can see that I had extended the lines out of the back ground and into the foreground. If everything was in pencil, it would be difficult to tell what is part of the image and what is part of the diapering. I already know that the image is in ink: everything in pencil is the diapering and I can easily erase wandering lines.

You're not done with the lightbox, just yet. Go back and put a dot in each black square. If you do this now, you won't have to figure out what color to use in the out of the way edges. Ink all of the diapering lines and dots and erase the graphite. From here on out, it's paint by numbers. Now, you don't need the lightbox; you can draw out the diapering lines with a straight-edge and make your boxes equal sizes, but, it is so much easier to trace it. Even when I trace an image that has diapering in it, I use my own patterns after I'm finished tracing the foreground images and the borders.

As I said, it is paint by numbers. Every square that has a dot, color it #1 color; in this case, gold. Do one color at a time so that you won't get confused.

Once you have color #1 compete, you can concentrate on the other colors.

By the way, the same square pattern, turned 45 degrees, can give you diamonds. Just line up the points along one border so that everything shows up even.

Once color #1 (gold, in this case) is laid down, move on to color #2, which is dark blue. Do all of color #2 (for three or four color patterns) before moving on. If you screw up, and put blue in the wrong box, and you don't want to scrape it out, just finish up the rest of the boxes in blue and make is a two color pattern.

There are plenty of patterns you can use for three or four colors. In this example I'm using a simple stripe pattern. One diagonal line of gold, one of blue and one of red. Check out https://www.pinterest.com/lindatruelove/sca-scribal-diapered-backgrounds/ for other patterns.

Once color #2 is in place, you should be able to see where you missed color #1. Touch up the gold, as needed, then start on color #3 (red).

Once the diapering is done, paint in the rest. I used the same red and blue for the border to give the image some continuity.

Try to avoid using the same colors in the foreground image as you used in the diapering, as the items will blend together. The goal is to enhance the foreground images, not hide them. If I use dark colors for the diapering, I'll use lighter shades for the foreground, and vice-a-versa. I want the diapering and the foreground to be distinct elements.

Here is the axeman with all of the color in place. See how the light red of the tunic floats on top of the dark red of the inner border and on the diapering?

Once all of the color is in place, start inking over the lines. The black lines will help the colors of the diapering stand out more, and will cover up any bits of wandering paint. Use a Micron or similar pen. I used a 0.3 for this image and a .07 for the axeman.

Once you have blank ink in place, it's time for the white work. Just a note: I put a white pattern on the outer border but didn't like how it turned out: too busy. The outer white work was drawing my eye away from the diapering and it didn't look at neat and tidy as the diapering. So, I painted over it.

With a couple more coats of dark red and blue, the image looks very nice. I used white lines running diagonally across the blue and red boxes. You can do this with a fine brush and paint (gouache only, not with water color), or with colored micron pens, or with gel pens. I used a gel pen on these two scrolls. I find the gel pen to give a very even and consistent line, although the pen I was using for builders ran out half way through the work: I had to run out to Michaels to get a new pen. For the builders I used a Gelly R@ll white pen with a .08 tip. On the axeman, I used a new pen; a Uniball Signo with a broad tip.

Once the white ink and completely dried, I put a dollop of paint on the intersections; blue on the red boxes and red on the blue boxes. This gives further depth to the diapering.

For the axeman, I made simple crosses in each blue box with a dollop of red in the center. The white brightens up the surrounding dark blue or red, making it appear much brighter than it actually is; again, helping it stand out. The Uniball pen did give a nice line, but would have been too thick for the pattern I used for the builders.

 There are many methods of enhancing diapering, in-box crosses and diagonal lines are only two options. You are only limited by how much space you have, how steady your hand is and how fine your brush or pen is. If you have large boxes, you can put a circle and a dot in each:

For smaller boxes, there might only be room for a small circle.

 In this example, I had a solid blue background, divided with black lines. I then drew diagonal white lines through the vertices of each box and put a dollop of gold at each intersection.

The next two examples are the same method, only at 45 degree angles to each other.

And finally, I used diapering in the recipient's colors with small black and white crosses in the middle of each box.

To conclude, diapering is not very difficult to do, although it does require some extra time and fiddly work. But the pay off is huge. I hope that this helps and inspires you to try your hand at scribal diapering.

Check out the full size images here and here.