A little project

I've sent the contents of the entry below to Paul Antonio, in the hope that he will confirm that I've not gone insane,
I also sent a mail to him about diamonds and lozenges, and the construction of letters a few days ago. I'll put that in when I get a reply.

Meanwhile, I've got a little project to do. It's a friend's birthday coming up and she has expressed an interest in some personalized writing paper.
So I'm doing up an original with 'From the desk of Dianne" in Gothic Textura Quadrata, with a few flourishes on the letters. The D will be illuminated and have a bit of trail-y vine-y stuff with a few flowers going down the page an inch and a half or so. I'll gild the D and the centre of the flowers with Will's Quill's gilding mix. (Still too cold to use the gesso I have, which I found out the hard way is formulated for Australian summer).
I'll then copy the original onto a heap of paper that is coloured to look a little like parchment.
I want to get some envelopes to match the paper, and do a little something to decorate them in a matching sort of way as well. Hope I can find some to match.

It's nice to have a break from thinking deep thoughts about g.t.q. To think I haven't even gotten onto the script analysis of the Bedford Hours yet!

Confusion - Straight Lines

Akiko, I'm not suprised that you said that you were confused. I certainly have been.

I'll try and explain .....

The ductus books (ie all the books showing how you write the gothic script, of which there are a million) state there is 1 pen width between each letters within a word. And also 1 p.w. as the counter space within a letter.

I've always known this, but I never noticed the 'picket fence' effect this achieves before. (and I'm wondering if it's a bit more complicated than that in the actual historical writing)

I've noticed the issue because I've been looking at pages from the Bedford Hours (and other examples since, to check it out further, such as the Luttrell Psalter - looking at textura precissus is a bit easier because the writing is clearer.)

By "picket fence" I mean that if you take a piece of gothic writing and cover over the top half of the writing, you can see 'a picket fence' effect of the bottom half. - all that equal spacing between the VERTICALS, whether they are from within the one letter, or within the entire word.
This is much more of a 'textual' effect. The verticals take up a lot of real estate on the page, so having them even makes the whole thing look even.

Have a look at these words, taken from the Michelle Brown example I scanned in entirety in the last entry

Here is "oderunt" :
o to d - the spacing between is 1 p.w, and the same whether you measure the space between the letters, or measure the distance between the last vertical of the o and the first vertical of the d
d- e - this is a ligature. This is just a paleographical rule that the scribes used for various combinations of letters. The two letters share a vertical.
e -r - look what happens here! That ain't no 1 p.w. between the e and the r! But there is 1 p.w between the verticals of the two letters. And this makes it a textual pattern - nice and even.
r - u - again, they are right up against each other - no 1 p.w. between the letters, but there is 1 p.w. between the verticals of the r and the first vertical of the u.
u - n - now we're back to 1 p.w. between the letters, which is also 1 p.w. between the verticals.
n - t - are just touching. Not 1 p.w. between the letters, but there is 1 p.w. between the last vertical of the n, and the vertical of the t.

Now have a look at 'gratis' :
Can you see the same thing happening?

The thing to do seems to be to equally space the verticals, NOT finish a letter, move along one pen width distance and start the next one. The latter will work for some letters, but moving along one pen width from the last vertical to the next vertical is ALWAYS true

I can say one thing - having a constant one pen width between the letters (not the verticals) would make the writing a lot more readable.

To document my journey of confusion along the way :
: At the beginning of all of this, a couple of weeks ago I discovered that :
In my writing, I was altering the space sometimes for 21st century readability. I discovered this when I first wrote out that "Gods of Snow" quote with all the n,m,i,u's and my spacing was nothing like that in the exemplar in Drogin.

: Then, I talked here in the blog about equal space between DIAMONDS. Because I was thinking only about n,m,u,i,'s because that was in the quote.
Then (days later) I realized that it was the spacing between the verticals that was relevant, not the diamonds. It's only in n,m,u,i that the letters are simply vertical (for i), vertical...vertical (for n,u) (and more verticals for m). With all the other letters it gets more complicated - a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h, and so on have more construction in them. I needed to look at the verticals, not the diamonds.

I hope that explains what the last couple of weeks of posts have been about.

Straight Lines and Diamonds

I've been looking at the script analysis of the Bedford Hours in Michelle Brown and Patricia Lovett's "The Historical Source Book for Scribes"
I was avoiding it, coz I felt it was cheating, but I've had 'feelings' about the diamonds, and there is also the spacing issue, so I looked.

First - the diamonds.
They are not built up diamonds in this script after all! At the original size of this picture in the book, the diamonds measure 3 mm x 3mm (and the verticals are slightly offline to the centre of the diamond, as Drogin mentions).

*groan*
I realize that I've gotten a bit ahead of myself - I haven't done the formal script analysis yet - but I wanted to do some basic pen stroke practice appropriate to the Bedford Hours as practical work while I did the mostly paper work of the analysis, and I've found myself dragged into this confusion.
I should have done script analysis, and measured the diamonds vs p.w. first, instead of just looking at their particularly pointy ends and thinking 'oh, they must be built up, so I'm going to practise built up diamonds".
Don't I feel silly.
But once you've made a mistake, you don't tend to do it again (you hope). And now I've had practise with built up diamonds, for when I do use them.

On the verticals : the image very handily has vertical lines drawn through the verticals of most of the letters. And they are all 5.5 to 7 mm apart. I think this is a reasonable case for saying that all the verticals are evenly spaced - allowing for enlarged error because of the enlargement from the original, and also human error by the scribe. There is variation when letters are ligatured, of course.
Well - no kidding! 1 p.w. It says that in all the books. So in this case, inter letting spacing should be 3 mm = p.w. Plus, to have the lines going through the centre of each vertical line - that's another 1.5 mm (half p.w.) multiplied by 2 (right hand and left hand edge of each vertical respectively) = 3 mm, to give a total between the verticals of 6 mm. (where I measured 5.5 to 7 mm)

I have been getting myself a bit confused. There is the same space between the verticals but I've talked about the same space being between the *diamonds*. This is true for m, n, u and i, because they have diamonds above their verticals. So it's effectively the same space as between their verticals for these letters.
Won't work for the rest of the alphabet tho.

I've really got myself in knots because I was looking at the Gods of Snow quote, and noticed a fundamental problem with my script - that I was varying from the pen width for my inter-letter spacing to make the script more legible to my eye.

I have been practising looking at the space between each diamond as i draw/write it with my m,n,u,i.s, I'll have to swop over to verticals, so the practise is useful/relevant for when I hit the rest of the alphabet.

I know, I know, I know - that both inter-letter (ie counter space) and intra-letter spacing is 1 p.w. I just seem to have picked up a bad habit somewhere. I can understand why - making it more readable. It just isn't correct. And I've practised so much - it's kind of ingrained now. *sigh*
I'm very glad that I have finally picked up the problem from looking at historical examples.

I am getting a bit tired of being stuck on this issue. It's so simple!
I will work it out.
I definitely think too much.

Did I mention that anyone reading this might end up confused, coz I was?
Behold!

Gods With Snow

Here you are Akiko dear.
This is from page 67, Marc Drogin, Medeival Calligraphy - It's History and Technique - a book I could not survive without.

The quote is not from the Bedford Hours - it's just a quote manufactured for the qualities of it's letters, same as an abcdarium.

Note that space between the points, both top AND bottom is exactly the same.

In the reality of using other letters as well and more normal sort of writing : :

Below is an extract of the B.H. that Stan Knight chose to blow up (Gothic Scripts - Textura Gothic - D4, which is the page id, from the book Historical Scripts")

.
If you choose a picket fence sequence (m,n,u,i,) - I've been going for "minus" of the dominus, and part of the "humiliatus", you'll see that the spacing is very close to regular (4 or 5 mm, I forget) between the points, top and bottom. (well you'd hope it's the same at the bottom, with straight verticals!). The m, n, u - that's where they do get a bit bigger here, even tho they didn't in the Gods with Snow quote above.

Noticing this (why did anyone TeLL me!) has changed my script enormously just in yesterday's practise. It's much better.
Maybe someone did tell me, but I wasn't listening.

Sepia Ink

I have yet to add Walnut ink in it's various strengths ....none of the above is the colour I really want - which would be the colour I'm seeing in old mss that used iron gallic ink. I hope to achieve it with the walnut ink tho. The Liquid Spectrum Burnt Sienna is the closest.
You can mix inks. I've seen a whole book on it. It was more on colours achieved that the technicalities of mixing different brands together and what it did to the ink chemically. Would have to consider the additives. Which is why Walnut would be good - it's just organics and water.

Spacing

OK, so I've been practising the "dipped" tops, and the straight lines and diamonds, with writing that latin sentence that is all m's and n's, u's and i's as part of that practise (I'll do the pen flourish-y practise later)
It occured to me today that my Latin sentence was too legible. You could distinguish the individual letters, whereas the whole point of this sentence is that they should only be distinguishable by the joins internal to the m, n and u's.

So I had a look at the spacing. I measured point to point of the diamonds in Drogin's example of the B.H. I measured point to point on another page of the B.H.
And they are all equally distanced, regardless of which part of which letter they are.
The page I measured from varied a little, but it was pretty consistent. (4 or 5 mm, regardless of letter height)

I measured mine, and they were all over the place. I'm putting in extra space between each of the letters.

So now I'm about to print out some new graph paper with 5 mm wide columns, (one for each vertical) and a second lot of lines spaced at 1mm, so I can size the diamonds for each vertical correctly.
The diamonds will be very nearly touching. (they should be 4 mm wide) unless it is a 'n' or 'm' where they have the joins at the top.
They would touch if the flicks are added to the diamonds (this is the final step in creating the diamonds, and one I'm not going near at the moment. Flicks are easy)

I'm suppressing a quiet urge to scream. I shall get this right. One day. At least I've got pretty good at doing the built up diamonds, and the dipped tops, though I haven't done dipped bottoms yet.

I was looking at the Second Coming last night. I always thought the writing was below my best standard, and actually pretty crap. With this recent knowledge/practise, it appears even crapper. But that means that I'm progressing :-)

As I looked I was wondering why to the Lord God why I did a two columnar format for the piece, as it destroys the rhythm of the poem, and makes it hard to read. As Paul pointed out, it should be at least 5 words to the column to start with.
I was imitating the layout of the 42 line Gutenberg Bible - that's why I did it.
But from Paul's comment about modifying design to suit the piece (in terms of the length of the bottom margin) - I wouldn't do it like that again. I don't feel that I have to follow what the source mss did - but use it as inspiration, and use the medieval 'rules' plus modern design rules in my design work.

I've put some information (like Fraktur being a German version of the German script) which is kind of really obvious. And about the spacing today. It's really obvious information. But I'm finding that there is a big difference between reading about something, and *realising* it. Once it's realized, you don't forget it. It kind of goes internal.

Graph paper printing time ......and only very quiet screams.

One Day Be Monsters

I'm reading a China Mieville novel at the moment - full of descriptions of horrible yet wonderful "Remades" (people physiologically combined with animals in a factory, as a punishment - and then used as slaves).
And it set me to thinking....

I am ultimately working towards reproducing work from the Mira Calligraphae Monumenta, which presents the Gothic and Italic scripts and illuminations/illustrations of fruit and insects.

but what if I were to create my own creatures? My own grotesqueries? I don't mean normal sorts of 'monsters', but actual grotesqueries - each one unique, and consisting of elements of man and beast (and insect) combined together?

That certainly appeals to my tastes, and gives me more design/creative outlet.
And it will be my own unique work.

My brain must have been building up to this - I've been thinking lately how good it would be if there was a book that was a collection of grotesques to look at. They are only 'cartoons' that were produced as one-offs in the margins of gothic mss, but they are so popular and appealing - and so many different styles, even just in (what .... 1300 - 1500?) - never mind all the other creatures imagined up over the centuries that would fit the description of an amalgamated creature.
Maybe I'd do the anthology myself ... along the way. It gives me a good excuse to collect pictures of grotesques, anyway.

Nibs

Even though using Higgins Eternal ink improved the ink flow, and pouncing the paper helped too - I've gone back to a W.M. nib and it is SO much better than the Brause. I'm really appreciating it's flexibility since I have to do funny wiggles to build those diamonds.
Shall have to ask the scribies about what I could be doing wrong with the Brause. I've already searched both archives with no luck.

8th October
Having asked the scribes,
Calote suggested that I raised or lowered the resevoir - which worked. I really like the Brause now I'm using it. Very crisp and smooth.

Katarina Helene suggested
- "gravity" issues and hence
- controlling how thick the ink is by grinding my own
- filling the back of the nib with a brush (with W.M.'s) and then shaking the filled nib once or twice back into the ink well.

I feel silly (again). If it had been a W.M. with a reservoir that I had put on myself, it would have occured to me to adjust the resevoir since the ink wasn't flowing well. But because the Brause nib came attached to the pen, like a Speedball, the thought didn't occur. *wry smile*

Straight Lines and Diamonds - argh

I said somewhere back there that the first of my practise would be straight lines and diamonds, especially since my diamonds weren't 'just touching' the lines, so that is part of what I'm practising at the moment.

So I've been practising to get my diamonds just touching the lines. And then last night I noticed that the Bedford Hours diamonds are built up - made more pointed with the nib edge at the line-touching end.
Argh!
So now I'm practising built up just-line touching diamonds. It's a bugger - my practise paper doesn't like it much and I'm getting paper fibre in my nib.
I'm doing that sentence that was created to look unintelligible in g.t.q. - all m, n, u, i's and a few v's. So endless diamonds and straight lines. I'm not worried at this stage if the B.H m,n,u, i's and v's are slightly different in form - I'm going with the basic ones because this is about lines and diamonds. I'll post it when I can get it looking reasonable.

The Gothic Family

It's amazing what you learn when you re-read things.
From Harris - because g.t.q. was so formal (and slow), less formal scripts were developed a mixture of g.t.q. and cursive hands.
These were generally known as 'Bastard' hands.
The French formalized version was "Batarde" - hence all my confusion about Bastard vs Batarde.
The German versions were Fraktur and Schwabacher
The Italians got into the Rotunda form.

It's a lot more complicated than that, but there's a start.

The Gothic script family tree

Did I mention developing a family tree for the family of Gothic scripts?

Perhaps a very small, undernourished one.....

Just read of Leonard Wagner's treatise in 1507-9 (no, I'm not going to type that name - I'm in a hurry) showing 100 variants, mostly Gothic, mostly Textura (to paraphrase what Marc Drogin is saying)

Sad .... (me, I mean) The most useful reference I've found so far is the Wikipaedia reference to BlackLetter. It's a starting point, and refers to some good (not to mention obvious) Mss. Wonder how much to trust it? (I don't, coz I don't know who wrote it, but it's a start)

Plans for the next part of my work

OK, this will be thinking out, planning out, and something to refer back to.

Not to forget, in amongst this, I have a Coptic book to make. I have to remain mum on the details of this, since Kit reads this blog. Or perhaps I will end up putting in details of it's development and the suprise will be seeing the book itself at the end 'in person'.

• Theoretical Work

1. Script Analysis

Gather pages from the 3 Mss Paul recommended

• The Bedford Hours
• The Psalter of Queen Mary
• The Geese Book

Create a (cardboard) folder for each.

For each script

a. Go through the questions that Meisterin Katarina Helene so kindly provided in order to :

b. Create an exemplar.

14th September I need to include abbreviations and ligatures and look for the missing letters (eg 'k') - Thanks Jeannie Leighton

In the past, I've written the letters out to create the exemplar. However, it's crazy to write out less-than-perfect letters to then learn from! I'll have to make photocopies of the sources, and play cut and paste with a final photocopy.

c. 19th September Build a sheet of 'basic' strokes for the hand - eg the tops of the ascenders (maybe forked), some end strokes (maybe dipped), the particular curves etc.

d. --- This is where I get to start practising the script in my practical work (below) ---

e. 19th September After reading Sheila Water's paper Analysing Script and Practising Effectively, I think it'd be a good idea to do a script analysis on my own work, once I'm happy with it. And then to compare with the original script analysis to pick up any errors.

2. I'll call the following MSS Page Analysis.

Continue on the analysis work, but this time of the other elements on the pages of the MSS.
A great help will be Mistress Rowan Perigrynne's "Analyzing a Style" paper from the Lochac College of Scribes,

http://www.sca.org.au/scribe/articles/analysing.htm

and the notes at the end of Drogin's "Medieval Calligraphy",

walking through general layout, borders, margins, capitals at various levels of text, use of colour and so on.

I'm inspired to do this because of the mistakes I made in using pen flourishing etc in "The Second Coming" that Paul picked up. By the end of doing this for the 3 Mss, I'll have a good idea of the style/s used with these 3 High Gothic Textura Quadrata Mss.

3. Gothic Textura Quadrata analysis

This will be the 'putting the High Gothic Textura Quadrata script in context' part of the work that Paul recommended.

For the moment, I'll confine the scope of the work just to G.T.Q, not other variations of the Gothic script family.

I'll hunt through all of my books that could possibly contribute something to the history of G.T.Q (Source Book for Scribes - Brown/Lovett, Medieval Calligraphy- Drogin, Historical Scripts - Knight, and the History of Calligraphy books I have - Gaur, Anderson etc.

I think I'll build a 'master analysis' document, comprised of Mistress Katarina's script analysis questions, Mistress Rowan's Mss page questions (and she has script analysis questions in there as well - that's where my existing list came from!) and Drogin's list, to make a streamlined list.

The information from different periods of G.T.Q will be fitted in under each heading.
So each heading will have 3 sections to start (from the 3 High G.T.Q. mss) and any more I can find.
Plus there will probably be 'general information that I find that isn't specifically dated that I can add in as general notes under that heading.

If I quickly exhaust the G.T.Q information available to me from books I can

• find other sources of other High G.T.Q, (probably from the lovely scribes if not from the books) and examine their differences.

• I need to think more to incorporate more script analysis. Paul wants me working from scripts, not books.

• To include collection of more elements of script decoration and any other distinctive page elements from as many well regarded High script sources as possible (think more)
  

• I think that I need to develop my own 'family' tree of the Gothic script, with examples of each (photocopied)

• be in a position then to decide how much further down/around the tree I'm going to go with this complete analysis of the Gothic script family.

• hopefully do some meaningful work before ending up muttering "gothic textura quadrata" endlessly in my sleep
  

• Practical work

1. Pen Control Work/Warmup
Each morning beginning with 1 page of circles, drawn as per Bill Hildebrandt's Flourished Calligraphy.
When I reach 100 a minute, I'll be able to move from pencil to pointed pen and try and do the required number in ink without a re-dip.
Only after that do I get to move onto broad pen.
And then the 'partial loop' shapes he shows- months down the track.

Doing this in the past for a couple of months helped my pen control a lot. I stopped in when I started work on "The Second Coming" and want to re-commence it.

This also serves as warm-up.

2. Script Practise

Start back with a few days of basic work, while I am doing the script analysis of the first script.
This means straight lines, diamonds, quadrata shapes. Paul mentioned that my diamonds were not consistent in just touching the baseline. Lots of 'i's then
A good talking book, to save me dying from boredom.

After that, script practise using the exemplar from the first script analysis with especial reference to the problems that Paul mentioned.

-------- Ask Paul for a review when I feel ready----------

Then the other two script analysis so I can learn their scripts.

Paul recommended that I start work on Batarde, as a break between them. I'll have to think about that more later on.

2. Illumination work

a.. Daily work - Practise the white work exercises provided (once again) by the wonderful Mistress Katarina Helene, from

http://meisterin.katarina.home.comcast.net/whitework.html

-- I also want to learn how to paint the whitework that appears in the interior of illuminated letters. It looks like acanthus from both directions as it flows down the bar.

I need to get paint on my fingers occasionally, or I go into withdrawal.

b. Major pieces -- I'm thinking about whether or not to reproduce a page of each of the 3 mss, or just one. It will depend on the variance between the 3, I think. I'll be doing at least one.I have a feeling that I'll feed that I have to do all 3.

For fun and for a break

- Paint a grotesque or two.

- Make the Copic book.

Right now, I've started back on circles and basic skills in G.T.Q. today
Searched on the Net for images of the 3 mss, with little success yesterday
Next, to go through my books looking for images of them. I have a feeling that I may have to bother the Scribes.

I still have to write up some details of The Second Coming, plus finish my Shading and Highlighting piece. Done 10-12th October

From the entry about Paul's critique, I also need to

* add various comments to my notes Done

* research on the meaning of 'burnish' and how 'brown' fits in

* think more on gathering examples of pen flourishing. Doing this later when I'm studying pen flourishing again

* find out what happened with my script analyses for the Second Coming Done, 10th October

The Second Coming - Paul Antonio's comments

Paul was incredibly kind, and provided a critique of my piece.

I originally started publishing stage by stage scans of the piece in a blog to entertain my non-calligraphy friends and keep them updated on what I was doing. However, the following comments are rather "calligraphy speak".

I have no idea why this post insists on having text at different sizes. I've tried re-formatting, removing all formatting, exporting and re-importing from Word, reformatted. I give up. It's supposed to be all the same size. I used colours to indicate importance.

Here are his comments, interspersed with other notes I made during our conversation.

• Gilding

• I mentioned that I knew that I’d laid the acrylic gesso down too thickly (I didn't mention the second 'coat' - to fix that I'd have to scrape back down to the paper).
  

To gild when the mordant is thick - use a double layer of glassine paper, and burnish very quickly and lightly.

Then use more pressure to bring up the polish.

-- -> notes

• To research - the use of the term "brown" in gilding - ie burnished gold is brown.

Burnishing means 'darkening' of a material. It compresses the gold particles together.

--> research and then -> notes

• The best teeth to use are those of carnivores, because they have the most enamel. He uses German Shephard. I don't know what mine is.

-- -> notes

• Majuscule Importance (there must be a better term) and Decoration

• The pen filigree (down the side of the left hand column).. well, it's a start.

The only way to learn is to look at hundreds, thousands of examples from the relevant period/region.

--> part of the Gothic Textura study coming up. Will have to incorporate into learning - do a seperate 'module' on it?

• I used various methods of decoration for various levels of the Majuscules in the piece

ie any capitalized letters in the poem were rubricated with a simple blue vertical line.
first letter of each line of the poem were rubricated with a simple red verticle line
first letter of first word in each verse was a pen flourished versal
the poem heading was completely done in pen flourished versals

I did this after reading Christopher De Hamel's British Library Guide.

Paul pointed out that my 'levels', overall, weren't actually contemporary to the period.

Also that rubricated versals were a Dutch thing.

That I should have assigned versal letters to all capitalized letters

The script was too heavy to be used with pen filigree work

--> All of the above can be avoided in future by being more familiar with the decorative elements that typically accompany a particular script - region/time

• With the decoration of the T and the S (the first letter of the first word of each verse) it's important to construct the design around the letter geometically, not just by copying

I just copied it and altered it a little to fit my versal.

Note that variance on the diagonal is less obvious than variance on the horizontal/vertical.

Pen work wouldn't have been used to fill the space for the T and the S (first letter of first word of each verse) anyway

--> construct decorative pen work geometrically in future

• The Script

• My columns are too narrow. I should be able to fit at least 5 words in each space (bugger)

• In an earlier post I recorded that. June Francis made the comment, about my ascenders and descenders being too short. Paul agreed.

• I'm inconsistent with the width of my letters eg an 'n' on one line compared to an 'n' on another line.

• I'll wimper slightly here, and say that the layout caused me to write at about half the x –height I’m used to. I did try a narrower pen, but lost my thicks and thins – I like the script to be heavy.

• I write my Gothic Quadrata letters too wide. 1 p.w. counterspace!

I do that at double the x-height, just lost it when I decreased it. *sigh*

• That my x-height was squat

All these problems came from my script analysis of the two contemporaneous mss. What went wrong? (Plus, I obviously can’t handle writing at a small x-height, not without more practise, anyway)

• That the diamond/slanted feet should only JUST touch the baseline

--> For all of this - practise the diamonds touching, and practise the script at a small x-height. (x-height used was 4mm)

• Illumination

• He really liked my painting

--> :-)

• The vine work : - vines are always either the same width all the way along, or thickest at the base and getting thinner.

A good way to draw the vine at the same width – take a piece of paper and draw dots along one edge, removed from the edge by the width of the vine.

--> Notes

• On the direction of the flowers in the bottom margin :

They should all face the same way, or L,R,L or R,L,R. to make a good design.

Important - that the original illuminators didn't necessarily always use design principles, and a little re-design may be necessary.

-> remember

• For the future

A good way to learn is to copy mss, and think about each aspect, thinking ‘why is it this way’

That I should do a script analysis of

- The Bedford Hours

- Queen Mary Psalter

- The Geese Hours (German) at the Pierpont Library

And that these are examples of ‘High’ Gothic Textura script

To look at the Gothic script from it’s beginnings to the 19th century .

Did he say just Gothic Textura Quadrata or the entire Gothic family? I’ll have to check.

To study where the script came from and what it was like at it’s height. To use critical thinking.

That no book(Knight’s “Historical Scripts”, Brown/Lovett’s Source Book etc) has the depth of information that I needed, but Brown’s “A Guide to Western Historical Scripts from Antiquity to 1600”was the best one on the subject, which I don’t have.

But I do have Knight, Brown/Lovett, Albertine Gaur “History of Calligraphy”, Donald Anderson’s “The Art of Written Forms” and Joyce Whalley’s “Students Guide to Western Calligraphy”.

He wants me to examine scripts, not just read and digest books.

I think I’ll start with just Gothic Textura Quadrata and find out how long it was around for.

Meanwhile, back to basics with the Gothic Textura Quadrata script in practice. And I promise that I’m not going to scream. I WILL get it perfect!

Next post on The Second Coming will have the details of the script analysis on the couple of contemporaneous mss I examined, the colours of the paints I used. I might as well put it all up in here neatly, as well as being scrawled in my project book.

The Second Coming - Finished

Since the last scan, I've

• done the top margin

• burnished the gold a little.
  

There wasn't much point in doing much burnishing. I made a big, big mistake when doing the gilding. There were a lot of holes and so I did a 'patch' job with the acrylic gesso after laying the first layer of gold. The new layer of gesso stuck. Additional gold leaf didn't. Ouch - what a lesson.

Anyway - here 'tis :-)


If I don't sound very bouncy - I had bugger all sleep last night. I'm bouncy!

Now ..... where should I put it up? I desperately need more wall space!

Sally's DragonFly

Sally took a photo of him with her digital camera. He's come out rather better than when I put in my scanner!
The poor little guy lost an eye in transit ....

The Second Coming - Bottom Margin and the T finished

The bottom margin has been outlined in a 0.1 pigment marker. It makes a difference - makes it look more finished .....

I've also finished the T at the side, and added 'he Second Coming' along the top to complete the heading of the poem.