My First Illumination

... sort of.

Sounds like a quirky children's book, doesn't it?

I figured before I went ahead in illumination and wasted my time--and perhaps more importantly, Master Tristan's--then I should see if I liked it. So I decided to "illuminate" something in the roughest sense of the word, to see if I enjoyed sitting hunched over my desk squinting at and imitating old manuscripts as much as I thought I would.

Well, I finished my first "illumination" in four days, if that's any indication.

In fact, it's not "illuminated" yet; that is, I haven't added the gold. Because I 1) don't know how to use gold leaf yet, 2) don't know how to use "pseudo-gold-leaf" yet either, and 3) didn't want to mar my pretty drawing by experimenting with pseudo-gold-leaf yet. I figure I'll experiment tomorrow (on a fresh piece of paper) and see what happens. If it works, I'll add it. If not, I'll make sad eyes at Master Tristan until he shows me. 8^( Then I'll add it.

I chose an illuminated capital since it's relatively small, and I chose one of the more complicated ones I could find because I do love a challenge.

So. My first illumination, sort of. For reference, here is the original and here is a close-up of the original.

As with pretty much anything that I post here, I don't mind comments, including constructive criticism. However, I am well aware that the colors don't match perfectly. I spent three of the four days without a bulb in my daylight lamp so using the icky fluorescent ceiling lamp, which means that the colors look right under dim fluorescents but nowhere else. However, since I was just playing around to see if I liked the work, getting everything *perfect* wasn't really the point so much as ... well, seeing if I liked the work.

I think I do. :)

( My First Illumination )

Pimpage!

*dons feathered hat and hoists gold-topped cane*

I mentioned in an earlier post that Bobby is starting a graduate program in medieval history. As such, he is collecting some of his thoughts, ideas, and notes in his journal.

On the advice of his paranoid Internet-savvy wife, he is friend-locking all of these posts.

However, he does want some thoughts from and discussions with other people who have an interest in history and/or the Middle Ages. And since I know that some of Ye Felagund Flist fit that criteria, I thought I'd make an informal introduction.

Flist ... greenknight33
greenknight33 ... flist.

So feel free to friend him if you'd be interested in these posts. (I will also remind him to enable his friend notifications. So if you don't get re-friended in a couple of days, it is because Bobby isn't quite LJ-savvy yet, not that he's being standoffish. He's actually much nicer than me. >;^)))

And his introductory (non-flocked) post about why he chose medieval history can be found here.