Black Hours, final

I can hardly believe it's finished, but here we are. My first Black Hours piece has been a terrific learning experience, and I'm glad I did it. I look forward to tackling my next Black Hours piece in just a week or two, and I'll definitely be using what I learned here to make the process go faster. My vellum supplier has also really appreciated the feedback I've sent him on his early attempts at making black vellum, and says that he will be taking different approaches to the process going forward.

Without further ado, here are all the pictures:

The last time I posted, I had not yet added the green; here we are with the leaves and a couple more bits of fruit added. The green is probably a darker shade than they used in period, and doesn't show up well against the black by itself, but that's what highlighting is for. We'll get to that step farther down.

For now, it's time to begin filling in all the empty space with more stems, leaves, and fiddly bits -- tendrils and such -- in gold, with a little silver here and there just for variety. To give you an idea, here's the first corner begun:

You can really see the difference here, and how all the detailing pulls together the relatively "loose" elements of the design, bringing the flowers and leaves into a harmoniously balanced whole.

Above, a closer look at the bird with his red legs, and a couple of silver additions in the form of a leaf and flower blossom, with no color added.

The name of the award for which this scroll is being given is the Order of the Dragon's Heart. It's a service award, not given out very often, and is considered something of a big deal. Here, the badge is done in Coliro/Finetec silver, and green paint. Once the text was done, I put my gold leaf away completely. This silver won't tarnish over time, as the text will.

About halfway done with the border; compare the right side with the left to get a feel for what a big difference the detailing makes.

The seal of the Middle Kingdom; I had a lot of fun rendering it in this style, rather than going for opaque red and silver. Again, the green didn't show very well against the black, so I've highlighted the dragon and laurel wreath in Coliro gold. If you look below the seal, you can also see where I've highlighted the red flowers in gold. Blue and green details will be highlighted in silver.

The photos above and below were an entertaining comparison shot; I was showing the lady who gave me this assignment my progress and noting that for some reason the green just was not showing up in the photo, even though it was visible just fine in person. The photo below is meant to just show how well the badge "lit up" green when taken from another angle. I have no idea why that was the case.

Here we are now with all the vine work added in gold; it's time to go back in, highlight the blue and green details in silver, and then add a silver outline around the entire border. I'm so close to being done!

To give you an idea of what a difference the silver detailing makes, here's a pair of before-and-after shots of a section of border. The red flower has already been highlighted in gold, but look at how you can barely make out the green leaf just above it. The blue flowers show up okay, but not great.

And now, after: The flowers remind me of butterflies, and the leaf is finally picked out against the black.

And here is the completed piece! The silver outline helps define the edge of the border and really gives it a finished look. I love how crisp and clean it makes things.

A slightly different angle here, to get the bottom of the border to catch the light a little better.

And finally, another pair of closeup shots of the seal and badge, because they turned out so well. I especially like the texturing of the red around the dragon, on the seal.

I can hardly believe it's finished! This scroll represented over a month of work, with occasional days off. The slowest part was the gilding of the text, and I've since learned that in period that wasn't actually done (although I still want to double check with experts who've done this before). If I were to skip gilding and just write the letters in silver and gold paint, that would have gone much faster. I've also seen imitation scrolls like this one where the calligrapher simply used white ink, and those look fine too.

I am now down to three or four scribal projects to complete. One is another Black Hours for the supplier of all this vellum! Then, I've got a scroll replacement to do for a client, then a knighting scroll for the same guy I did the King's Chalice for... and finally, I've been asked to do a lady's Laurel scroll "sometime in the next five years" as a challenge of my skills. Because Laurels like to push artists to do more art, step out of their comfort zone, and expand their limits... and this particular lady is a scribal Laurel, so she gets to push me. I'm still thinking of what I'd like to try for her, but it's got to be good.

Thank you all, once again, for your comments and questions. I really appreciate them.