woensdag 25 februari 2009

Testing :(

Bertrik is trying to put gold on the batch of gesso we made a couple of weeks ago (second batch of cold gesso). Last week it stuck, now it doesn't! Grrr. Stupid stuff, we're going back to modern glue!

No, not really. But it is frustrating!
Here's what happens: the outer edges look a bit darker to start with, and become shiny when breathed on. The gold sticks to the edges (about 0,5 mm), but not the middle. Small dots and thin lines (which don't really have a "middle") are ok.

Bertrik is also putting gold on a scroll blank that I put warm gesso on at the beginning of this month. At least this sticks... First try of polishing is so so. One dot loses some of its gold (in one spot on the side) and a leaf is ok, but becomes a little shine through.

Meanwhile I'm practicing my calligraphy and feeling the fact that it's been a long time! Every letter has to be just right, on the millimeter, or it looks wrong. Do I have the patience for this. Well, hopefully it will get easier with practice. I'm practicing gothic littera bastarda, which should provide me with a script that my persona(s) can use, and is also the script we used on the Polderslot History book, so I'm getting double value for my practice. Have to watch out for monks' cramp though, after an intensive day at the computer for my daytime job...

donderdag 19 februari 2009

Dragons

Dragons

 

This is the design we will be using for the parchment trials. These two I made to practice and test stuff. The gold was put on gum ammoniac, the paints were all made by Bertrik using gum arabic as a binder. They were painted on paper, but you can see the paint cracking a bit on these as well, so that is something we need to look into. Bertrik scanned these when one had the final black outlines done and the other had not, to show the difference.

 



 


 

dinsdag 17 februari 2009

Dragons

For the parchment test we chose a small design of a dragon from Vienna, Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod 2315, fol 100v, a medical textbook made in Paris around 1280, reproduced in Christopher de Hamel, A History of Illuminated Manuscripts, second edition, Phaidon. The design with the dragon is in the middle of a page with lots of decoration and what looks like a text with a gloss and handwritten notes by different people around it.

I've been using these as practice pieces, and the first are now almost finished.

Once they are scanned, we'll put up scans of the original and my poor reproductions of it...

Testing testing

We're ready to test batch two of the gesso. We made it last week and let it dry out and harden.

To use the gesso we put it in a mussel shell with tap water and let it sit for about 20 minutes until we could dissolve it, stirring with a wooden stick.

We made several tests: one thick layer, dots, one thin layer and two thin layers.

Succes number one: this batch sticks! Whohoo!
Bertrik tried to polish the first dot, which was disappointing, because the gold disappeared... Maybe we need to wait longer between putting the gold on and polishing. After waiting a bit longer the polishing went ok but not great. Most likely, the layer of gold is too thin. Wait and see in next weeks installment of the gesso quest...

donderdag 12 februari 2009

What we've been up to so far

So, we've been playing with paint and gesso for about a year now, taking very small steps... Bertrik mostly mixes stuff, and makes test pieces, and I make illuminations to use up the stuff that works.

Projects
At the moment we are working toward two goals: three small illuminated pieces on real parchment as a test of different paints and gesso's and an illuminated book of Polderslot history. This last is a project started 12 years ago (!) and never finished. We are now nearing the Shire's 20th birthday, and thought that would be a good occasion to pick it up again (you'll notice that what was an overly ambitious project to begin with has now more than doubled in size, adding 12 more years to the original 8 or 9 but we're optimistic :))...
Along the way, scroll blanks and small bits of illumination appear as practice pieces and for variation.

Paint
For the paint right now we are using all gum arabic as a binder, since that turned out to be easiest to work with. We mix up a batch and put it in a mussel shell, which is a very convenient container to store it in. It can be re-used just as storebought water colors can by adding water. We tested a little imitation vermillion red paint made with gum arabic on parchment, and it flaked off almost completely. This might be due to the fact that this was unpumiced parchment, but we are a little worried. Along with the gesso experiments, we'll need to experiment with paint binders as well...

Gesso
For the gesso (the ground to apply gold leaf to) we are testing out two recipes, both of which we've almost got working...

Recipe from The Calligrapher's Handbook by Heather Child
16 parts slaked dental grade plaster
6 parts white lead or titanium white (not period but safe, so we're using that)
2 parts sugar; in the last batch we used 4 parts, ground rock candy)
1 part fish glue
a little pigment to see the form; we used 2 parts armenian bole
distilled water (we used 7 parts, which made it quite fluid).

All this needs to be mixed and ground together very well. Then it needs to dry. After it has dried completely once, you can take a little lump, let it sit in a bit of water (just covered), stir it, and use it.

We had some problems with the first batch we made (didn't stick at all and had lumps), so in this batch we used some more sugar and we ground the ingredients much more dilligently than before. The second batch is now drying out, so next week we'll be able to test it.

The other gesso recipe we turned to when the first batch wasn't working. We found it on Randy Asplund's site: http://www.randyasplund.com/browse/tournpg/tipg.1.html
This gesso is quicker than the first recipe, and you can use it right away (no drying step in between).
The trouble we've had with this recipe is that it turns lumpy as soon as it cools down, because the base is hide glue, which is gelatin like, and sets at room temperature. Also, we're clearly too lazy when it comes to grinding, because the first batch of this also had little rocks in it. Now, we've got the gesso in a mussel shell sitting in hot water on a scented oil burner, we've ground it better, and put more water in, so we can make thinner, less blobby layers, and it seems to work better.

So, progress is very slow, but it's there! From now on, I'll try to keep notes of what we do on here, since we just realized during our last visit/advice session with Mistress Oriane that we had almost no record of what we did, which didn't help in trying to work out what we might change to improve things...

Illuminations

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I've been meaning to document some projects on here, and now is the moment to start! So first, here are a couple of illuminated pages intended as sca scroll blanks that I started years ago. At the beginning of last year Bertrik and I started to experiment with making paints and doing illumination again, and these were the first things I picked up again.