County scroll, part 18: final

I admit, it has been a bit since my last post; other commitments, plus a bit of unwillingness to sit at the table, kept me from getting any work done. But! Over the past two or three days, I've finally gotten back into it, finished the outlining, and purchased the semiprecious gemstones that will go in the four corners of the figure. All that is left for me to do is glue the stones in place, and I will be finished. 

First, I needed to finish coloring in the right hand border. I used strips of every color in the palette, but the palette was so limited that I ended up repeating a couple of colors. After that, I worked the outlining in stages over a period of three days. Every bend in every knot, every bit of gold, silver, or copper, it all got outlined. And to be fair, it was less of a slog than I feared it would be, but I'm still glad I broke up the work. 

It's always so neat to me to see the way each step of the process adds a little bit more to the overall effect of the piece. 

Here it is with the border about halfway done. You can zoom in and compare the left side to the right, especially on the knots, and see the difference the outlining makes in sharpening everything. 

Above, a pic of the whole piece at this stage. Below, a little up close detail: 

And some more, again you can see the difference between left and right with the figure's hair: 

The one problem I experienced was that the white paint I used was a different formula from everything else (Doc Martin's Bleed Proof White, if you're curious), and the bleed proof nature of the paint made it actually resist the outlining and any attempts to paint over it. Remember earlier, when I accidentally painted white over one of the eyes? Yeah. Trying to correct that was surprisingly difficult. If you look closely at the left eye you can see where the line is a little ragged. That's from the brown paint physically beading up rather than going down in a nice smooth line over the white. 

 

Once again, a well behaved brush makes life so much easier. Also good paint consistency, because you really don't want your paint to suddenly blob all over the place. I was well pleased with how both behaved, even though it's looking like this brush may need to be retired soon. Its point is developing a bit of a curve, which I can still work with, but I'll have to keep an eye on it in future. 

Middle Kingdom seal. You can see where the outlining around the eye gave me a bit of difficulty. Again, the paint not wanting to behave on top of the white. 

Finally, it was time to go to the local treasure house that is Von's Beads and Gifts. They have the largest collection of glass beads in the Midwest, and the largest collection of stone beads in the continental United States. There is an entire room devoted to freshwater pearls, and another set aside for tumbled stones and crystals. If you are ever in the area and decide to go there,  be sure to bring a chaperone. Just to give you an idea...

That's a 350-lb. sphere of smoky quartz, next to a number of carved stone chess sets. Yes, it's for sale. Von's is awesome. 

But back to the topic...

I wanted amethysts originally, because the recipient's heraldry includes purple as its main color, but in the end I went with polished ametrine, a blend of amethyst and citrine which is a yellow or orange stone. The ametrine just happened to be a bit clearer and darker purple, on the day I went shopping. You can see a bit of yellow on the tip of one of the stones below. These were just about three dollars apiece: 

I haven't glued the stones down yet (I'll be using a flexible superglue called E6000), but here's a tentative placement of them on the scroll: 

I'll probably change the angle of the top two stones so that they point inward, like the bottom stones are doing. But this gives you an idea of what the finished piece will look like. 

And that's it! I'll likely go to the copy shop and get a copy of this for my portfolio, then glue the stones in place, and then it will be ready to deliver for signatures from our area "king and queen". After that, it will be handed off to the recipient, hopefully during a "royal court" so that more people can see it in person. 

Thanks to everyone who has offered questions and comments on the piece throughout the entire process! I've appreciated your company and encouragement. 

My next posts will probably be about the next Calf to Codex project, "Codex 2," for which I will be doing some calligraphy and a very little illumination -- just some capital letters, one on each page. After that, look forward to me attempting not one but two Black Hours scrolls. 

Thanks again! 

County scroll, part 17

Painting continued yesterday and the day before, and is now almost complete. First, though, here is a picture of my assistant, Misty, who occasionally gets up in my lap if she feels I'm not giving her enough attention. She enjoys watching me work, and I enjoy her being far enough from the table that she can't bat at my tools and paints.

Most of today's photos are just stages of color being added in bit by bit, including the purple I'd mentioned and was so excited about. I'm also pretty excited about how well my brush behaves. Get yourself a brush that comes to a needle sharp point, and you'll be able to manage terrific detailing like this:

Those tight places around the fingers were a bit of a challenge, but my brush was up to it.

Here we are with the purple complete, and some yellow detailing added on the birds and around the knots:

I finished out the day with white, and made a small mistake that will be covered up later, so that the figure now looks like it is winking at us:

So that was Thursday.
Friday, before I started, the sun was coming in my window at just the right angle so that the colors actually showed up on my camera in their correct hues, rather than being so dark that people keep complimenting "the black" which is actually green. So now you can finally see what I'm talking about!

I also took a pic of my palette, showing some of the colors I'm using, in an attempt to get the colors rather than the super darkened versions you see every time I try to take a picture with all that reflective gold around.

This is a palette I reuse a lot, so it's got those blue shades I won't be using on this scroll, but the orange was mixed up fresh just for the occasion. Here it is on the piece.


I'm especially pleased with how well it showed up as detailing against the green:

And finally, for Friday, I added the red and then stopped, because I wasn't feeling well:

The recipient had red hair at the time this award was originally given, and was known as the "Archer Queen", which is why the figure is holding an arrow instead of St. Matthew's book and crozier in the original image.
When I'm feeling better, I'll come back to this piece and do dark brown or black for the shoes and facial features, and then it'll be time to outline everything. Outlining is usually my least favorite step, not because it doesn't make things look good (it really makes them look terrific), but because by the time I'm ready to outline, I'm usually tired of the piece and ready to stop, and outlining often goes slowly because there's a lot of territory to cover. So it feels like a slog, even though it's necessary and important.
That's it for today! As always, thanks for the suggestions and comments.

County scroll, part 16

At long last, the gilding was completed and I started painting today! All I had left to do was touch up some bare spots and mottled areas, like this one: 

The differences are subtle on this camera, partly because of the lighting, but I'm really pleased with how much cleaner everything looks now. 

At long last, it was time to say goodbye to and put away all these tools: from left to right, my agate "dog tooth" burnisher, one of the brushes I used for painting miniatum, my soft brush for getting rid of excess leaf, and my reverse elbow tweezers for handling leaf. They are all resting on a glassine envelope, which is used in burnishing as a barrier between the leaf and the burnisher so you don't rub the leaf right back off the page, and surrounded by my bottle of miniatum and three scrap containers full of copper, 12-karat white gold, and 23-karat gold. 

Even though I was ready to paint, first I had some debate about what colors to use before I could start. My source materials are not at the best resolution, nor, I suspect, at the best color faithfulness to the original manuscript. I've seen the same St. Matthew page in several different brightness levels across the internet, for example, and sometimes his robe looks red and other times more of a burgundy purple. I had to settle on a green shade, and I had to talk myself out of using any blue, because the sources didn't have any. (It was really tempting to use anyway because it would have looked excellent next to these metals. Oh well.) 

Instead I got to use a nice obnoxious pink. 

In all the photos that follow, my colors look artificially dark, due to the camera dimming the exposure because of light reflecting off all that metal. Here's what the pink and green I did today actually look like (yes, those are seashells, long story) : 

Compare that to how dark the green is in these close ups, where it can be mistaken for black if you didn't know any better. 

I promise, it looks better in person. You can see how filling in the bodies of the critters makes all that knotwork suddenly make sense, though. And the kingdom seal is going to look nifty done in this style. 

Just about the only photo I got that even comes close to showing the colors accurately was of the right hand border around the text, where I'm using color to help the knotwork band stand out a little. 

Man, that is a bubblegum pink, isn't it? In addition to these colors, I'll be using an equally obnoxious orangey yellow, reddish orange, red, the burgundy sort of purple I already mentioned, white, and brown. It's a very limited palette, with no shading to speak of. For the most part I'll just be filling in the colors where they belong, adding minor detail in only a few areas, and then outlining. The outlining will probably take longer than the painting itself. 

Still, I'm happy to have put gilding behind me for this piece! As much as I enjoy gilding ordinarily, and as much as I've learned from this go-round, this step has gone on long enough. 

Thanks as always for your questions and comments, whether it's here on my blog or via Facebook, Tumblr, Discord, or any of the other places I share these posts. I appreciate the chance to talk about my work. 

County scroll, part 15

The main gilding is finished! Finally!  

Here's the before and after pic for today's work. The first is the adhesive I laid down...

And the second here is all the gold laid in...

There are still a few bare spots to touch up, but overall, I'm quite pleased. And of course, I have some mottling to deal with, where the silver stick to the copper, or the gold stuck to the silver. The worst of those areas is up here on the top right corner: 

But I can deal with all of that tomorrow and finally be ready to paint! 

I can identify very well with the scribes of old who wrote complaints and comments about their work into the margins of the old manuscripts. Deo gratia, deo gratia, et iterum deo gratia, indeed. 

County scroll, part 14

Not much happened today on the gilding front, but I'm happier with the results than I've been for quite some time. I only laid the miniatum adhesive in on these areas:



I tried something a little different this time; where in previous gilding stages I had tried to lay the gold down quickly in an attempt to avoid bare spots, I had unfortunately ended up with the adhesive shrinking a little as it dried, leaving the gold above it with minuscule wrinkles in the finish. Miniatum advertises a "mirror smooth" finish if it's done right, but my impatience has really affected that.

So today, I slowed back down a little bit, and gave the miniatum more time to dry. A couple of hours, I think. But I also went back and "reactivated" it by breathing on it really really heavily, like fogging a mirror, prior to laying the gold leaf down on top of it. I had been remembering to breathe on it in previous sessions as well, but either I wasn't doing it enough, or I was moving too slowly and letting the fog evaporate before I could get the gold laid down. In any case, that was how I was ending up with bare spots. Today, however, a combination of the ares being both smaller and easier to mask meant that I could fog them thoroughly, lay the gold down in one go, brush it away, and have almost no bare spots to speak of.

I'm actually really happy with how today's work turned out:



The only real downside I see here is that, to my eye, there is a noticeable difference in brightness between today's gilding and the areas I'd done previously. It's not horrible, and since I didn't let the miniatum sit overnight, it may still wrinkle a little further as it finished drying, in which case the areas will all match.

But I'm so close to being done! All I have left to gild now is the outer border, and then go back and touch up some of the white gold and copper, where they've gotten mottled by other metals. After that, I'll be ready to paint, which I'm really looking forward to.

As always, your comments and questions are welcome and appreciated. Cheers!

County scroll, part 13

This weekend didn't allow me to gild as much as I could have (but the two hour trip for good coney dogs was worth it), but I still made good progress today on the yellow gold border. I'm beginning to run out of things to say on the topic, though; I mean, there are only so many ways to talk you through the process. Still, here are some pictures. 

Adhesive painted down. I'm still figuring out the best drying time for this stuff. I'm working with such small amounts at a time that the instructions to let it sit for a few hours just don't seem to be right at all. I keep ending up with bare spots to repair, like this: 

... and that was with only a half hour drying time. Still, the repairs are easy enough; I just wish I didn't have to take that step every single time. 

Main gold finished, adhesive painted in for the dragon at the bottom. 

The top dragon is silver (white gold), but this one will be part of the kingdom seal that makes the scroll official, so I thought yellow gold would look better. Also the background of the seal is white, and yellow gold will give better contrast. 

This time, I barely let the adhesive sit five minutes before coming back to lay the gold down, and it went much better. There were still a few bare patches, but they were much easier to deal with.

And finally, here's the entire piece so far:

I anticipate the rest of the gold going down much more easily, since it will all be straight lines and much of it will only have another metal touching it on one side, rather than being surrounded. But that will have to wait till Wednesday, since Monday and Tuesday are music days! As much as I enjoy gilding, I'm definitely looking forward to moving on to the next step. 

Thanks for your comments and questions! 

County scroll, part 12

Another short day today, working on the raised gilding on the left side border around the figure and its clothing. Because of all the other metal already laid down, I'm having to work in stages,  masking off areas and doing them one at a time.

The process is still the same, though: paint sticky, let sticky dry, apply gold, brush away excess... repair bare spots...

I'm annoyed with how many bare spots I keep ending up with, although today looked better. I keep going for shorter and shorter drying times and it seems like I might almost have the right timing worked out soon. 

Here's the mask I built for today's section of gilding. I removed it to paint down the adhesive...

Then masked it off again to gild. I don't actually have photos of that step. 

But here it is, gilded and with the bare patches already repaired: 

The gold looks so cool next to the white and the copper. I'm getting sick of gilding, but I'm also getting excited to see it all done. 

And that was it for today! Total time probably three hours, I think, including time to let the adhesive dry.

As always, questions and comments are welcome! 

County scroll, part 11

The past few days have been pretty quiet. I haven't had eight hour days available to me to accomplish a ton of work, plus after a while gilding through a mask gets tedious. 

First, I painted down the miniatum size for the knots in the right side border. Miniatum is supposed to take a long time to dry, but my lines were so thin and delicate that by the time I came back to gild, the adhesive was already nearly past the window where it would take the gold. I had a lot of bare spots.

So I let it sit for a day, then this morning I came back and touched everything up with the Mona Lisa adhesive. Here it is, all finished: 

And here is the entire piece so far:

Tomorrow I'll start masking off areas on the left side to gild. There will be a lot of gold to lay down over there, and I expect it will take a couple of days to complete, working in stages. It'll all be raised gilding, but with thicker lines (instead of the delicate knotwork I just completed), I'm hoping that things will at least be easier to paint, and that I'll have fewer bare spots to repair. I guess we'll see! 

Finally, just for fun, I've had someone ask what my workspace looked like, so here is a shot from above of the current clutter: 

County scroll, part 10

Today's post got eaten the first and second time I tried to publish it. Let's try one more time. 

Yesterday I finished the flat gilding by adding white gold in the corners where the amethysts will eventually go.

After I did this, I was reminded of a unique quirk of gold leaf: it likes to stick to things. (For fun, here's a scrap stuck to the natural oils in my skin on my little finger.)

This is great when you're trying to get it to stick to itself, so you can lay down multiple layers and get a nice rich effect... less great when you want to avoid sticking it to, say, your copper and giving those areas a mottled finish: 

Heck. 

It's nearly impossible to scrape away just one layer of metal leaf. Once this has happened, you're pretty much stuck with it unless you decide to gild over the area again later. 

Incidentally, this was a learning experience for me. I originally laid down the copper first because it was flat gilding, and I thought that flat gilding would go easier without any raised-gilded areas getting in the way. Instead I should have laid down the gold first, regardless of where  and done the copper last, because copper will not stick to other metals. 

Time for a workaround. I made some simple stencils, sort of, just windows in graph paper, the exact dimensions of the space I was going to gild, which would mask the copper and keep it from getting silver stuff all over it.  

For raised gilding, I use Kölner miniatum, a sort of mustard color adhesive that dries slowly, but if done right, leaves a super smooth finish for the gold to rest on.

Incidentally, gilding interlacing is a bit tricky since you need to keep track of your "over and under" throughout. Here you can see the penciled in reminders I gave myself: 

And here is the finished bird: 

The knots were actually quite a bit easier to paint in: 

So that was probably two hours of work, including cutting the stencils I was going to need later. Miniatum takes hours to dry, so I got to give myself a bit of a break in the middle of the work, and come back to this:

Everything that's painted here is going to get white gold. All the rest of the gilding will be yellow gold, and then whatever is left will be painted with actual colors. 

The arrow was actually pretty easy, since it's not close to anything else. The birds, knots, and dragon are all going to be a bit more challenging, but that's what the stencil is for. 

So, proceed as usual: apply sticky, let sticky dry, apply gold, brush off excess. The only difference is that I need to do the applying through a little window. No big deal. 

Miniatum takes hours to dry, as I mentioned above, but if it dries too long, it will stop accepting gold at all. It also doesn't like a lot of heavy pressure applied to it when you lay the gold down. So there's always a risk of bare spots appearing once you brush the excess gold away, like this: 

Annoying, but fixable. For bare spots, I actually really really like the Mona Lisa adhesive. You just paint carefully over your bare areas, let it dry for five minutes, if that, then come back and reapply your gold. 

Remember how I mentioned that I like to save my gold scraps in a little container? Scraps are perfect for patching bare spots. 

Problem solved. There were still a few places where a tiny bit of gold got onto the copper, but they were very small and most of them cleaned up with just a little brushing. The spots that are left are barely noticeable. 

Next up is yellow gold, but I am going to have to wait a few days before I can start on that. I've got a couple other commitments I need to see to first, but the wait won't hurt the piece at all. 

As always, your questions and comments are welcome!