maandag 21 december 2009

Succes




A succesful evening at the start of the Christmas holidays. Bertrik fixed lots of gold, and I did preparatory stuff for the illumination of 1992: polished and fixed the gold in and around the illumination, painted the surrounding bars blue, and practiced shading the sky.

Looking at examples in the 16th century Dutch illumination book and my brand new catalogue of the Master of Catherine of Cleves I learned that the sky should be blue at the top, fading to very light blue or white at the bottom/horizon. I happened to have a copy of Duchess Nerissa's handout on advanced illumination with the examples, and read about limning: using very small brush strokes to do shading. So I made a practice piece, and it works very well! It's possible to go back and forth endlessly fixing things. I started making diagonal strokes, which looks a bit strange. I mixed a few extra shades of blue, and next time I'll do the sky in the illumination.