Illuminating Details
What's in manuscript illumination details? How do you create them? Find out how to increase your scribal detailing skills.
The Myopic Scribe
Illuminated manuscripts have the tiniest strokes details. They’re so intricate I don’t see how they were made without a visual aid. Unless….they were created by someone who could naturally see with precision. Even in the ancient world magnification was technically possible. Crystal or glass lenses were known. But no deliberately created lenses have been found from then. And Pliny didn’t […]
What Do You See?
From the Daily Star in the UK You can enhance your work by nurturing your visual awareness. Whether you research pixels in medieval manuscripts or notice details in modern pictures you increase your observation powers through constant practice. What do you see in the picture to the right? Is it a duck or a rabbit? Whether you see a rabbit or a […]
Tip To Seeing Like An Artist
See the details? Have you been asking yourself when painting a preprint or charter why experienced scribes put the shadows where they do? Why the whitework goes where it does? Or how you transform what you see to the page? Here’s an idea for you to try. Before the huge number of illuminations on the internet, I would hunt down books that had enlarged the small pictures of illuminations. Today it’s easy to do the same thing yourself with online images. Find a high-resolution digital illumination picture you like and zoom-in. Enlarge and expand them dramatically. Save them or print them out. Then take your time and study their strokes and details. Try to recreate them. On Pinterest, I have a few boards that may help you with this. Illumination: Drapery Illumination: Shading Illumination: Strokes Illumination: Whitework I have confidence you’ll figure things out. The more illuminations you peruse and pore over the strokes the easier it becomes. It’s all about you recreating tiny details. Related Prior Post: 5 Tips To Train Your Artist Eye Related External Page: Advanced Illumination by Mistress Nerissa de Saye
Why Lay a Scroll’s Groundwork with Permanent Ink?
Pencil sketch and start of inking.shown. In my post The Making of a Scroll, Part 1, I briefly comment about roughing in the border with a 4H pencil then going over those lines with a permanent .005 Pigma Micron pen. I’ve been asked, wh I do that? When I start a scroll I research and develop a mental design concept. Sometimes […]
5 Tips To Train Your Artist Eye
People don’t see detail like a camera, and yet as a scribe detail is penultimate. We anticipate what we think we should see therefore we miss things. Our logical brain gets in our own way. My first SCA art teacher, M. Gillian of Dragonsley, showed me a way around this, at least for my then novice brain. To draw an […]
An Itinerant Scribe 