First of all, I know: it's been quite a while since my last post. Burnout, overall stress, and mental fatigue make it hard to stay motivated. But I'm here now, and I've got some beautiful work to show you that I'm pretty proud of; it's just that I actually made it several months ago and then never posted about it.
Serena Kimbalwyke and I are not close friends, but I have tremendous respect for her wisdom and kindness, so when her husband Nikolai reached out, asking if I would be willing to do her Pelican scroll, I immediately said yes. The challenge was going to be getting it done in time for her elevation, and managing to get it to the event itself, which I would be unable to attend. Fortunately, the scroll itself was requested to be "one of my black ones"; I've gotten pretty comfortable with that style in the past couple of years, and Nikolai gave me plenty of lead time, so I wasn't too worried about hitting the deadline. Nikolai was also really great with communication, getting me reference photos of Serena, her service dog Clio, and several suggestions for things to include in the border.
Left to right: Nikolai, Serena, and Clio
(Photographer unknown)
Serena was already a Laurel for her work raising silkworms and turning the cocoons into silk thread, so I wanted to include something for that, but her award this time was not related to sericulture. The Pelican is the highest service award we give, and Serena was being recognized for her work putting together two entirely new, noncompetitive artisan venues, the "Tournament of Arts" and the "Crafter's Green", both of which are now regular additions to our kingdom's calendar of events. We typically have two TOAs each year, and Crafter's Greens pop up anytime and anywhere someone wants to set aside space for one.
Serena chatting about the Crafter's Green held at Pennsic 50 (2023).
(Photographer unknown.)
As always, the first thing to start off any of my projects is a mockup, either on graph paper to get a feel for composition, on Bristol to test the text spacing, or both.
The image ended up getting tweaked a little here and there, as they often do, but I knew I wanted to include Clio as well as Serena holding a Laurel wreath, to demonstrate her support for the arts within the SCA. I ended up not including her arms quite like this, as you'll see below.
Here is the beginning layout and the start of the text. I remember being really annoyed that I had to stop working on the calligraphy before it was finished, I think because I had to leave and go to work that day. I really prefer to do calligraphy all in one go whenever possible.
A note on those lovely circles: I do own and often make use of a drafting compass, but these particular circles, thanks to their small size and the frequency with which I make them, are courtesy of a Kennedy fifty-cent piece, and a 1970s era Eisenhower dollar coin. Those two coins are a perfect fit for the border widths that I use most often! Also note the placement: the bottom ones are centered on their respective "pages", so they're in the middle of the border. The side ones, however, are closer to being centered on the "window" made by the text block on the right, and the illustration on the left. Since manuscript pages in the Middle Ages did not often have equal margins all the way around a text block, this raises the side circles to about 2/3 of the way up the page, rather than halfway as you might expect.
All told, I was very satisfied with the calligraphy. I can no longer recall whether I did these in Winsor and Newton inks, or if I went with my usual Coliro mica-based paints. Incidentally, if you're trying this at home, never ever put mica paints into a cartridge pen. It'll get clogged and ruined. A dip pen, however, works just great. You thin the paint to the consistency you want, and then load the nib by "painting" the inside of the nib and reservoir with a wet paintbrush. The only thing I don't like about the Coliro silver is that it tends to be fairly translucent at the right consistency, and when it's the right opacity for a nice bright silver, it's almost too thick to write with. The gold doesn't have that problem, only the silver.
As you can see here, Serena's heraldry ended up in the left-side roundel rather than inside the portrait with her. A nice tree filled that space instead.
One of the joys of this particular style of manuscript art is being able to include hidden details all over the place. For a reference to Serena's sericulture, I couldn't resist making some of the leaves resemble mulberry leaves, which are silkworms' sole source of food.
Speaking of sericuture, wild silk moths are really pretty! The domesticated ones are apparently just plain white, if I remember my reading correctly. (Image from a Google search, photographer unknown.)
My original idea for a moth: cute, but not cool enough for this scroll.
There we go... much better.
I was a bit too focused on the silk stuff there for awhile, and attempted a roundel with Serena reeling silk thread off of cocoons, here on the right side of the page. It looked pretty neat, but was not related to her service, so I ended up erasing it and starting over. Also, the top right corner is a little bare, and features another sad-looking moth. We'll fix that soon enough.
No one believes me when I tell them that the flowers are just doodling. Look at them! Just look! The ovals aren't even oval-shaped at this stage! The only complicated bit is the hidden mulberry leaf at the bottom left corner of this shot.
Okay, here, we've replaced the sad-looking moth with... I'm not even sure what he is. There's this Korean cartoon called BTS, or BT21? And one of the main characters in it is named Mang. Serena, according to Nikolai, absolutely adores Mang. It's possible Nikolai actually used the words "obsessed with", I can no longer recall for sure. So we decided to stick him into the scroll as well. I can only hope I drew him accurately enough.
Mang was a little too exposed, so I hid him behind another flower.
These are Ho-Hos. They're both an inside joke and a reference to an Incident (tm) from several years ago. Did you know Ho-Hos are bite-sized? I did not. Neither did anyone else until Serena decided to prove it. If you want to personalize a scroll, it's hard to go wrong with silly inside jokes.
The entire left side of the scroll is sketched in now, and ready to paint. Included are her heraldic arms, the Pelican badge, mulberry leaves, a couple of silkworms and a moth, and three or four Ho-Hos for good measure.
The full scroll, still with Serena reeling silk in that right-side roundel. We'll fix it eventually.
I'm feel like I'm finally starting to get the hang of shading on black; it's about building up layers from dark to light, rather than light to dark as one might do on white paper. You also work with less opaque paint than you might be accustomed to, more "watercolor" style and less "gouache" style. If you look at this stage of the face on the portrait, you can see where the paint was laid down translucently to cover the whole face, and then more layers of color added to build up the cheeks, nose, and forehead. The same basic technique was done on the arm and on her wimple and veil. I'm especially happy with the face, though.
The day's progress overall.
Details, details, details. For some reason my lens kept blurring parts of these photos, but I've added detail and shading to the tree and more or less finished the portrait, topping everything off with a little gold or silver here and there for accent. In the right light, the image really glitters.
As a finishing touch, I went back and added just a tiny bit of rose pink to her face, to bring it to life just that little bit more. You can barely see the difference in these photos, but it is there.
For now, however, it's on to the next most challenging bit of color on the scroll: that wild silkworm moth. I have a tendency to work very cautiously, especially when I'm unsure of myself, and I was being very cautious indeed with this moth. I started with the translucent base coat, just to get the shape right.
I'm also generally scared to mix colors, or to make my dark areas dark enough or my light areas light enough. It's my biggest flaw as an artist, but at least I know it's there and I'm working on it. Compare and contrast these next two images to get a feel for what I'm talking about; I keep going back and deepening the color, thinking it's enough, then realizing it isn't.
And here is the final version, as complete as I could get it. Note the darker pinks and added definition. Not too bad, and not too far off from the original reference photo.
Mang. I'm actually pretty happy with the colors here; I feel like I got them pretty close to the actual cartoon.
I took a lot of photos of this piece, including "the day's progress" shots to send to Nikolai. Partly, I like keeping my clients aware of where I'm at in the process, and partly I do love the external validation when someone tells me that they think my work is pretty. My inner first-grader still loves playing show-and-tell.
The picture above is the last time we see Serena reeling silk in the roundel on the right. I finally figured out what to put there instead, and now she's chatting to someone and indicating the "TOA" with her hand. You can see how I based this off the original Crafter's Green reference photo.
Considering this image is the size of an American fifty-cent piece in real life, I'm pretty happy with how it came out.
While we're finishing up the roundels, here's the Pelican badge...
...and the seal of the Middle Kingdom. Scrolls in the Midrealm are required to have this emblem, either stamped by the Signet on behalf of the king and queen, or painted in by the scribe. On black paper, the stamp rarely even shows, and the painted version fits the art style better anyway.
Here is the scroll with almost all the most obvious bits painted in and ready to be hidden away by flowers and vines. Looking at it like this, you wouldn't believe that such large elements could effectively be hidden, but just wait.
That moment when you realize you've forgotten something kind of important:
I also decided to get the Ho-Hos taken care of before moving on to the vine colors. I tend to work all one color before moving on to the next, and do the least-frequent colors first. Since the vines are mostly red, blue, and green, I do them after any other colors.
Other large elements: the gold and silver acanthus leaves.
I didn't actually take this picture to show off the calligraphy up close, although I am happy with it. I had a drip of paint splash onto the D of "dragon", and if I remember correctly, I wanted to warn Nikolai about it. I was hesitant to attempt a repair and risk making the mishap stand out even more. It's been long enough since I completed this piece, I can no longer recall whether I lifted the paint with a damp brush, or just said "imperfections are part of life" and left it in.
Looking at the zoomed out photos below, I can't tell from there either. However, if you ever find yourself in a position where you've got translucent paint to clean up, careful application of a damp brush is your best option, at least on paper. There are other techniques for vellum or perg, but on paper you run the risk of damaging the paper or just smearing the pigment around, even if it's dry, and making an even bigger blemish than you started with.
The least common colors in the flowers: purple, yellow, white, and pink, all laid in.
I remember that Nikolai pointed out that the shape of the original sketched flower for Mang to hide behind looked a little, um, phallic, so I modified it to look a little more like an actual pansy or violet blossom.
And now we're off to the races: red, blue, and green, laid in one color at a time. With each stage, the border gets more dense and finished-looking. I really enjoy this stretch of the process, because you can see it come together really quickly.
Here we go, one, two, three:
After the colors are laid in and looking nice, it's time to go back to gold and silver, for the stems, highlights on the leaves and flowers, and then fiddly filler bits like thorns, tendrils, and so on. The photo below shoes the gold mostly laid in; note the pointy red and blue flowers on the bottom left of the scroll, with gold on the red areas, but nothing on the blue or green yet. By contrast, the pink oval "carnation" style flowers on the right side of both panels have gold stems, leaf detail, and little prickles on the flowers themselves.
Here we are with the silver added in. In addition to things highlighting the stems, leaves, and flowers, there are also fillers shaped like starbursts (or squished spiders) covering up any large gaps between elements.
I also couldn't help but hide a few tiny moths and squiggly "caterpillars" here and there.
I do always sign the back of my scrolls, but I don't always put a treasure hunt key on them. The note reads: "So very well deserved -- heartfelt congratulations! Matildis la Libraire, OL" followed by my email address, and then, "11 moths; 3 dragonflies; 6 Ho-hos; 4 mulberry leaves; lots of love and affection!"
And finally, here is the finished piece, with all the borders and roundels outlined in silver for that final touch.
I was very pleased with the final result, and Nikolai told me that he and Serena were, as well. In fact, they sat down and hunted for all the hidden details together, once they were home from the event.
Yup, she found Mang.
(Photo courtesy Craig Israel)
As always, thank you for reading a long and picturesque blog post. I'll try not to wait nine months before I post the next one, but in the meantime, feel free to reach out if you have any questions or comments!
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