KA&S Champion Scroll

adelavanbrugge received a request a couple weeks ago for a scroll for Kingdom Arts & Sciences (which was this weekend). Rather than try to find someone else to complete it on such short notice, we decided to take care of it in-house. To keep the layout simple, I suggested we base it on this page from Poggio Bracciolini's Orationes in Laurentium Vallam (c. 1485). It's a relatively simple example of Italian white vinestem that doesn't require a full page border, but is still attractive. I laid out the design in pencil, then transfered it via light box to a sheet of Pregamenata. I made two mistakes when inking the design: 1) the pen I chose was actually a very narrow oblique rather than a crow quill, so the lines came out a bit wide, and 2) the ink I randomly chose from what was already set up was Higgins Black Magic, which, as it turns out, gold is very happy to stick to.

Once I got the initial inked, I turned it over to adelavanbrugge for text and gilding. This is a relatively new hand for her, but I think it turned out very well. It's a very modern looking hand, which is not surprising as it's the basis for a large number of modern typefaces.

After the gold was applied, I got the scroll back to do a quick paint job. This style is very paint-by-numbers, so I just kept alternating red-green-blue until everything was filled in and then put little trios of white dots everywhere they would fit. The example I was working from appears to have left the vines themselves unpainted, without even any shading that I can see, so that made things go a lot faster. I also went back and re-inked the places where the gold had stuck to the lines with a technical pen.

Cioppa Construction Details

This is going to be a somewhat excessively detailed description of how I'm assembling the pleated sections of my new cioppa. It's mostly for my own reference, so I'll put it behind a cut.

( Details and Pictures )