Whether it's the winter blahs or just the holidays wearing me down, I haven't done much since my last post either. Last week or thereabouts, I finally found the energy to put brush to vellum again, so I have a few photos for that, but otherwise, I've been enjoying the quiet and the lack of pressure to create anything. Remember from my previous post that I said the SCA isn't a job, it's a joy.
Still, this is meant to be a blog to showcase my scribal work, so here is the latest on Bran's knighting scroll. The text takes up four full columns to resemble two pages, and there are three miniatures total, one of which is a battle scene that is two columns wide. I've started work on the simplest of the miniatures, and I plan to work my way up and do the battle scene last.
Here's where I had left off in October or November:
I hadn't done much more to it than to test the glair on the gold and make sure it would take paint well (it really does!), and to fill in the large blue squares of the diapering.
The diapering itself is a little bolder and potentially more "clunky" than the original, but there was only so small I was willing to go to create the grid on wavy vellum without driving myself absolutely mad with frustration. Here's a printoff of the original manuscript miniature, for comparison:
Note the size of the grid's squares in relation to the figures' heads and you'll see that mine are considerably larger, but I think still workable. I've also done something different with the bands of gold separating each square; I wasn't sure I'd be able to add all that black detailing, especially since I went with raised gold on the bands instead of flat.
Below is where I was ready to begin last week, with my cat Noodle supervising (in between watching the aquarium).
I've been asked, and the columns are four inches wide, so that gives you an idea of the size of the miniature.
After about an hour and a half of work (and a half hour of being distracted by my phone), I ended up with this:
All in all I'm quite pleased with this; I missed a spot adding red in one of the blue squares on the top row, but I'll be able to go back and fix that. Also in this photo the rest looks very black; I promise it's a bit brighter in person.
I'm also happy with the diapering pattern on the lady's gown:
It's just a swirled vine pattern done over the entire gown without regard for any folds in the fabric, but it ends up looking surprisingly realistic despite that. I see places here where I've missed laying in some gold behind her left arm, and I'll have to decide how to proceed with that (probably just some flat gilding), as well as tweaking her right sleeve and adding a smidge of blue there rather than having the white band be so wide. At least here you can see the red detailing is actually red.
Next time I get the chance to sit down, it'll be time to work on the two fighters; the one on the left will be dressed as Bran himself, successfully defeating the one on the right, who will be dressed as in the manuscript, minus all the blood from where he's getting hit by the sword.
I hope you all have had a peaceful holiday and a time to rest as well, and that you are able to return to your tables with renewed energy when the time is right.
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