A tale of 3 Baronies

It is true, I am a scribe.

An interesting statement to me, as many people call me this, but I'm only now starting to think of myself in this way....

I sort of stumbled into this portion of my hobby, several years ago, it was brought to me that someone was needed to do some illumination on a scroll for a baronial project, having NO experience in illumination, I agreed to try and help with this, having no idea the scope that this project would entail.

I met with an amazing lady from 3 Mountains, name Leah, who handed off this scroll to me:

It was PERFECT, penned by hand on vellum, the same text three times. Talk about intimidating. My job was to illuminate the bare portions on the left. OK.... my technical brain took over in panic and I started to break down the process into manageable pieces.

First I traced out the rough space left to me to illuminate, and confirmed that all 3 were of equal sizing. Then on a separate sheet of paper, I started to fill in the space. I decided to use an Italian white vine style, as I have a late period persona, and it looked like something I could accomplish without help. For reference, I used The Bible of Illuminated Letters, a great little resource for beginners, for sure. This is what I came up with for the space allotted.

 

 And After a bit of clean up and black lining-

 

Now that I had a satisfactory design, it was time to transcribe it onto the parchment- the scariest part so far. This was made a bit less terrifying by the use of a light table lent to me by the lovely Ignatius, our local Chatelaine. 

All of the designs penciled onto the original parchment

Now, the really scary part, painting. If I smudge even a little on one of these, it will be terrible obvious. I made a point to set this up on a large table, in a room removed of all pets and children, and all sources of moisture on a separate surface. At this point, I had to decide whether it would be better to paint each section separately, or do a one step at a time on all three.

 SO first, the letter, down goes the gold. In this case, I'd not learned to do gold leafing yet, although it certainly would have been an occasion to use some, instead, I painted on gold Windsor/Newton Guache. 

As is common in the period design, I outlined the (soon to be) white vine work with a darker blue background and outline, to make it pop away from the page. 

Then it was time to add in the other colors, from extant examples, I see that blue, red and green were most commonly found, looking back on this process, the hue of green I used, was probably too bright but it still popped from the other colors well.

 

And with the addition of red, and the base whitening of the vines and shields:

 

Once the base coats were laid out, I went through with an Archival Micron pen, and black lined in the details, and then took a TINY TINY brush and painted in the arms of each Barony (9 total shields) on all 3 portions of the scroll. the shield order rotated, with the Primary shield in the middle of the A on each.

 

 Once completed, and signed, this is what all three scrolls looked like together. 

 

Eventually this scroll was taken to a "treaty" ceremony between the Baronies of Three  Mountains, Stromgard and Dragon's Mist. There it was signed, sealed and cut into three pieces, each Barony keeping it's own version, representing a promise to support each other in event planning, new recruitment and all activities there encompassed. 

All in all, a great first experience with illumination. 

Go big or go home I guess!