I have a wonder twin. She’s pretty amazing. When I found out she had received a Court Barony from Their Majesties Ivan & Matilde while at Gulf Wars, but had not received a scroll, I reached out to the backlog deputy to see if I could snag it.
Marian has recently been dabbling in Italian Renaissance, so I want to look for a piece which was based in 16th century Italy. I happened upon this cutting
from a Missal and immediately fell in love with it. I bookmarked it and kept looking. After a few days, I realized I was coming back to this piece over and over. When I get fixated on a piece, I bite the bullet and set my task.
This would not be an easy piece for me, I knew that. I also didn’t have any calligraphy on the exemplar to go by. I took a look through The Art of Calligraphy and decided I’d use an Italic hand to best fill the space. I spent close to a day getting that to a point where I was happy. Then… then came the paint.
I had learned from my previous piece I really needed to lay the background in first. With a close look at the exemplar and a quick conversation with my Laurel, Camille, I determined I was likely looking at some kind of gold. It was very flat, so I didn’t believe I should use gold leaf. I pressed forward with Winsor & Newton gold gouache.
Once the gold was down, I did the mid tone on all the remaining illumination: blues, green, dark red, and flame red. With a light tone and dark tone of each, I shaded all the pieces. Once I had done so, I added in a yellow ochre border with the detail black lines. With that done, in went the white work.
There were many, many hours of work and love which went in to this piece. I am glad to have done it, and have learned some things along the way. But most of all, I was happy to do it for someone who has been a great part of the last year of my SCA life. I hope she likes it.
Calligraphy & Illumination: Audrye Beneyt
Words: Malcolm Bowman
Paper: Strathmore 300 Series Bristol – Vellum finish
Ink: IantheGreen Iron Gall Ink
Nib: Mitchell
Gold: 23k Gold Leaf, Kolner Miniatum, Winsor & Newton Gold Gouache
Paint: Holbein
The Voice of Audrye Beneyt 