It’s time for more #medievalstuffwithcats! I made this zodiac illumination. If you want to know a bit more about the process, read on… 
The zodiac roundels come from the calendar in British Library, Royal MS 1 D X bl.uk/manuscripts/Vi… (note that some of the roundels are not exactly round)
I decided to do this illumination because I want to start working on larger pieces of parchment. I used 8” x 10” (a bit smaller than A4). This feels like a decent size for a folio, although if we were working in a scriptorium this would be double the size and folded in the centre
I know this is the hair side of the parchment, mainly because the nice people at William Cowley have marked it with a tick. But it also has these little brown dots which are hair follicles. Here’s a magnified image of them
The hair side is always better to work on as it has a bit more friction on the surface, whereas the skin side is waxier and a bit more resistant to ink and paint. Some people can tell by the colour and texture what side it is, but I don’t have enough faith in my abilities
The parchment on the right is goat, which is clearly a different texture to the vellum. That’s about as far as I’m prepared to go on parchment identification
Even though I was using the roundels from BL, Royal MS 1 D X, I still needed to plan out the layout. This took ages - making sure the roundels were in the centre of each cell and that the writing was spaced evenly. It really hurt my head
But with the parchment costing about £30 a sheet, I couldn’t afford to make any stupid mistakes (although of course I did). Once I had the layout planned on paper, I used a light box to trace the image
I’ll keep the plan to use as a template. I’d like to do one for the labours of the months as well
Then I prepared the vellum, using pounce to soak up any excess grease, and gum sandarac on the areas where I was going to write. Chloe checks it out the quality
I did the script first, using my iron gall ink and a quill, on a slanted writing surface. I used a dip pen for the red and blue coloured ink, because I used a much thicker nib for the capital letters
Then I applied the gesso and left to dry overnight (caveat - I am not a calligrapher or an artist. I just do this because I want to research manuscript production)
Next up, the gold was adhered to the gesso
For a quick look at how to apply gold leaf, here's a video
Then the painting. At this point I realised I’d started off alternating with the wrong colour backgrounds – I started with the pinky colour, then blue. Probably doesn’t matter, I thought. But it did, because the whole colour scheme of the main images complemented the background
Medievals – 1
Book Historians – 0
It wasn’t a massive problem, it just meant I had to scrape off all the paint and start again – so it was a waste of time and materials, and wouldn’t have impressed the head scriptrix. Ten Hail Marys for me
Book Historians – 0
It wasn’t a massive problem, it just meant I had to scrape off all the paint and start again – so it was a waste of time and materials, and wouldn’t have impressed the head scriptrix. Ten Hail Marys for me
And then Leoba needed to test the quality of the water
I decided to erase the grid lines from this, but I could have left them – you still see them in many medieval manuscripts
These chaps are my favourites. Btw, if anyone has an issue with the taxonomy of the crab and the scorpion, I would invite them to peruse any medieval bestiary. And also the hashtag #notalion
I put the finishing touches on this morning. It's so nice at this time of year to have some natural sunlight to work in!
Leoba thoroughly enjoyed ‘helping’ me. At one point she managed to dip her ridiculous Basil Brush tail in some yellow paint and smear it all over Libra, Virgo and Aquarius. How I used to laugh when I saw medieval cat foot prints in manuscripts. Twitter, I do not laugh now.
And so that’s it, really. I think the planning was the hardest bit, so as usual, doing this has shown me again how practised and skilled medieval illuminators were, and how 21st century book historians are not fit to hold their quills 😆
Sorry for the long thread! But if you are interested in making #irongallink and #gesso, I also have these threads
