Weird things you find in medieval manuscripts.

In marginalia, no one can hear you scream

This image is from the 14th century Macclesfield Psalter (Fitzwilliam Museum, MS 1-2005, fol. 68r). I have no clue what the artist was thinking. Is this a skate or a ray? A moth. A ghost? Something more sinister?

The difference two years can make.

Another year, another thrown weapons scroll

  

This is the second time I have made this design. The first time was back in April 2014 to kick off my Alphabet Challenge (top image). The bottom image was completed the other day. The image is from one of my favorite period manuscripts, The Hunterian Psalter (f101r). The top image was done on Arches paper with Reeves gouache and Holbein gold. The bottom image was also done with Reeves gouache but on Fluid paper with FineTec "Arabic gold". 

As I said in a previous post, the FineTec gold is a lot shinier than the Holbein, although it is hard to tell from the scan. I kept to similar colors, as both were made for Baronial tournaments (the colors of the Rhydderich Hael are green, black and yellow).

One thing I noticed, after I had completed the second scroll, is that even though I was using the same paint for the color, I was using far less of it than my technique from two years earlier. And it wasn't just this scroll, I was using less paint on pretty much everything I was working on. The man and the centaur use the same tubes of green and brown, but on the top image, I used 5 or 6 coats of each, while on the bottom image, I only used 3 layers.

Without realizing it, I was instinctively making the images lighter, using the shading to bring depth to the figures instead of making the figures dark and using highlights to keep the images from being dark blobs.

Notice the legs of the man: In the top image, the chauses are all back with a line of white to give them a sense of depth. The white indicating where light would hit the fabric if they were 3D. Whereas, in the bottom image, I used two layers of the same black gouache, the first very thinned down and the second only on the right hand side. With a line of white on the right-hand, outside side give a much greater appearance of rounded legs.

It is nice to know that I am still capable of improving.

To Alay a Felande

Do what with what, now?

The Booke of Kervinge, published in 1508, listed the various methods of carving meat. Each animal was given its own term for dis-membership:

To break a deer
To lesche (1) a brawn (2)
To thigh a woodcock
To sauce a tench (3)
To disfigure a peacock
To lift a swan
To sauce a capon (4)
To spoil a hen
To frusche (5) a chicken
To unbrace a mallard
To unlace a coney (6)
To dismember a heron
To display a crane
To unjoint a bittern (7)
To untache a curlew (8)
To alay a felande (9)
To wing a partridge
To mine a plover (10)
To thigh a pigeon
To wing a quail
To border a pastry
To timber a fire (11)
To tire an egg
To chine a salmon
To string a lamprey
To splat a pike
To sauce a plaice (12)
To splay a bream (13)
To side a haddock
To rusk a barbel (14)
To culpon a trout
To fin a chevin (15)
To tranesse an eel
To tranch a sturgeon
To undertranch a porpoise
To rear a goose
To tame a crab
To barb a lobster

The Booke is an interesting read and I might have to go through and make a list of the methods of dismembering that are described in it. Certainly we can conclude that, if you were wealthy enough, you could eat any type of meat you wished.

(1) Leach.
(2) Meat from a pig's or calf's head that is cooked and pressed in a pot with jelly.
(3) A doctor fish (they wear little fezes and bowties).
(4) A castrated rooster.
(5) Truss.
(6) Either a rabbit or a grouper.
(7) A short-necked bird related to a heron.
(8) A long-beaked sea bird.
(9) Not a clue.
(10) Small, wading bird.
(11) This might be a joke. A Dictionary of Archaic & Provincial Words, Obsolete Phrases, Proverbs & Ancient Customs, From the Fourteenth Century gives this phrase ("tymbre that fyre") as "to supply it with wood. To timber-cart, to go with a team for timber."
(12) A flat-fish similar to a flounder.
(13) A fresh-water fish.
(14) A freshwater fish of the minnow family.
(15) A freshwater fish.

Trying out a new gold

It's shiny.

I am testing out some gold paint that Her Majesty gave me at Pax, last month. 

It is shinier than the Holbein gouache I've been using. It also covers better. The top image is two coats of the gold: my Holbein would have required three or four layers for the same coverage. So far, I like it. I just hate the container: it is so light that my brush moves it around when I try to pick up more paint. I have to hold the thing in one hand while I paint, which is un-natural to me, as I tend to hold my drafting board up in the air with one hand while I paint. 

The stuff is easy to use: put a drop of water on the paint and swirl it with the brush, until it is mixed in with enough of the pigment, and start painting. If I continue to have nice experience with it, I might pick up the six pack of gold and silver paint that Fine Tec offers. 

I just found a You-Tube video of you to use the paint that it completely different than how I used it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9q2U-Wz_iY I'll have to give her technique a try on the next scroll. But, she did say that this paint can be burnished to make it shinier. I'll have to give that a try as well. 

Things you shouldn't put on an SCA Scroll part 7

Things you shouldn't put on an SCA Scroll part 7

This image is from Trinity College B.11.22, fol. 11r and should not be put on an SCA scroll. This image falls under the category of what the hell was the illumination thinking of. I know what it looks like to me, was that what the scribe was intending? Was this a commentary on someone or something the illuminator knew? Was he saying, "Never moon a unicorn"? Some illumination needs a WIKI page or, if you are old enough to remember when VH-1 played music videos, we need a Pop-up Videos show just explaining what the hell.

Some more thoughts on scroll work.

Still trying to articulate something useful.

1) Light boxes are perfectly okay. I cannot draw anything freehand but I have a nice light box. No one expects a new scribe to make scrolls in a 100% period fashion. Light boxes, mechanical pencils, Micron pens: make full use of modern conveniences. If all scribes were expected to use period pigments and vellum from scroll one, the SCA will not have any scribes. If you are one of those talented people who can draw or paint free-hand, I am envious of you: I need to work off of an existing image.

2) Work to the level of your own skill. Please to do not think that you have to work at the skill level of other, more experienced scribes. I cannot do perspective drawing. Nor can I do blackwork or gold leaf. I can look at say, the Enkhuizen Book of Hours, and admire the skill and talent that went into making it. I know of many scribes that have the skill to do scrolls in that style, but it is well beyond my limited ability. So, I won't waste time and paper trying to use that style. I might in the future, when I have another few years of practice. I like early period work, which has no perspective, minimal shading and very simple designs. That is my wheelhouse and I like the style.

3) Scrolls do not have to be covered border to border in layers of paint and gold leaf. If done well, simple and be nice. The above image is two colors and red ink. It is from Harley 2799 and the manuscript is full of very basic, simple initials. Start small and work your way up to more complicated images.

4) Figure out which mistakes are worth fixing. On the above image, I should have used green paint for the bottom half of the 'P', but I wasn't paying attention and started putting blue instead of green. Five minutes into my blue period I realized what I did and then kept painting. The amount of work it would have taken to scrape the blue off certainly didn't out weigh how bad it would look afterwards. I just went ahead and kept painting. I did test to see what green on blue looked like and it didn't look nice. Period manuscripts are full of errors, don't feel bad if you stray over the lines, or if you use the wrong color or if you smudge some ink.

5) If you screw up completely, throw it away and start over. Paint and paper are cheap and you have to weigh your time; fix a major mistake or start over. Most of the time, it is not worth the time, sweat and tears fixing a major boo-boo. The above image is a good example: I made a very nice white-vine 'V' and smudged the ink. Then I made a complete mess trying to scrape and sand the mistake. I spent an hour trying to fix it before giving up and starting over with a new sheet of paper. It happens. Don't sweat it. Start early enough so that you have extra time to deal with mistakes, and if you miss a deadline, keep working. Mistress E-kat is working on a scroll for me and, she confessed to me, one of her cats jumped up on the table and spilled a glass of water on her paper and all of the nice gold leaf she was working on: ruined. She said that she could not save it and would have to start over. It happens. I'm not mad. She showed me what she had finished before the deluge and I can wait until she finishes it to her satisfaction. Most people in the SCA will be happy to wait.

6) Start work as soon as you get an assignment. Life can get busy, you can make a mistake, things can happen. If you get an assignment three months in advance and you finish it a week later; that leaves you with 2.75 months to do the Scotty; "Och, I cannae do it in three months but I'll give it mah best," while you spend the time binge watching Dr. Who.  Plus, the sooner I finish an assignment and hand it off to someone else, that's less time for me to screw it up.

7) It doesn't have to be perfect. Do not let perfect be the enemy of good. When I started doing scroll work, every scroll HAD TO BE ABSOLUTELY PERFECT and I would spend extra hours slapping more and more layers of paint onto the paper and looking back on those scrolls; they are terrible compared to what I'm doing today. The hardest lesson I had to learn was to stop. Leave the scroll as is. I had to teach myself when to stop putting paint down and that if it isn't a perfectly shaded area, that it is okay. More layers of paint is not better than fewer layers if it just makes the paper wet.

8) Don't be afraid to try new things. Talk to other scribes and take their classes, if possible. Ask other scribes if you could try their paint. Most scribes in the SCA like to talk and share "secrets". The best lessons I received, in regards to scribal, was after asking a better scribe, "How can I make this better?"

9) Sit down and paint. Make some time to do it. I'm not saying that you have to make 300 scrolls, or work on ten at a time, but you do have to devote 30 minutes to an hour at a time to make even a basic scroll. Make the time and do it. You will never learn how to do it if you don't, actually, do it.

10) Practice, practice, practice and practice.