Dosalena - Maunche scroll

Twelfth Night Scroll - 1/17/2015

There is a wonderful artist who lives in New York that I am so pleased to be able to call my friend.  A Real, Live, works for a living artist.  Her maunche was approved, and I quickly asked for the commission.  At the time I knew that I wouldn't be able to be present because we had already booked and paid for a vacation trip to St. Thomas for the weekend of Twelfth Night, when it would be awarded, so I wanted to do something spectacularly nice for her.

And I think it worked. :-)

First the inspiration:  Illumination based on the Prayer Roll for Queen Margaret of Anjou 1445.  I could not find it online anywhere, so I took several pictures of it with my phone camera and then printed out several copies to post on the mirror of my drawing area.

I liked several of the elements, but I wasn't going to include them all, but having the entire exemplar was helpful in choosing the right color schemes and details.

It was time to start the drafting of my art.

More practice pieces, more drafting, including practicing the layout of the calligraphy (seen above).   This was going to be a stretch for me.  Not only was this a much longer piece of wording than I usually do, it was not a traditional layout.

I chose to focus on the center of the prayer roll from the original, and not the entire prayer roll with the figures and initials at the top.  I made this decision after doing several mockups with the figures, pulled a picture of Guild Mirandola from Pennsic to see if I could fit it in, and doing some sketches.  It seemed very natural to place the Maunche badge in the middle with all roads (words) leading to the Maunche.

You will see that I eventually changed the way that the calligraphy fit as all the words actually ended up fitting in the prayer roll once I laid it out.

Layout on the pergamenta.

Mocking up the wording.  I wanted to practice this more to make sure it would work. 

Calligraphy of the main text following the layout of an actual prayer roll.  As usual, once I get "arting" I forget to take breaks and take pictures.  On the one above, I laid out the black ink, the lapis and the mosaic gold for the smaller initial letters.

Next is the leaf and vine.  The original has a little less symmetry, and I made a conscious decision to be more symmetrical.  I also changed my original design a little to put mini leaves around the maunche medallion.  I had seen examples of that type of design in other exemplars, so it wasn't out of place.  It also artistically helped the eye scan from outside to the inside.  I also inked in the Maunche medallion.

Another layer of mosaic gold.  You can read about mosaic gold in my previous blog posting.   I painted the exterior and the leaves with the mosaic gold.

Then I moved to the center for the Maunche badge.  I needed two light coats to give it the right look.

I added the purple for the Maunche badge, and added more lapis around the outside initial letters.

The final details around the initial letters of a beautiful russet red.  I applied the paint to the crow quill pen that I use for that level of detail.  It needed to be especially careful to get the right consistency for flow through the pen.  Too much liquid/water and there were spots on my practice sheet, too little and it did not flow properly. I then added white to the exterior initials on the exterior gold circle.  This punched up the design also, adding another level of detail.  Still wanting to add more depth to the vines themselves, which is true to the original exemplar, I took a lovely malachite that I had to just add a dot of light green to the vines.

After erasing all the lines that were left, I put in two lines for signature and it was ready to be packaged and sent off to the King and Queen for presentation.

I have heard that these pictures do not do it justice and that the recipient was quite surprised and delighted.  That makes me a happy artist.