Silver Rapier - Yellow Ochre on Black Paper

The finished scroll

The original exemplar.  Urs Graf, 1521

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Painting on Black to represent White Line Wood cut technique

Next assignment - Magdalena's Silver Rapier.  I was please to receive this assignment because Magdalena is a good friend and fellow Sharc.  I wanted to do something that would be close to her personna (15th century landsknecht), so I began digging into possible exemplars.  Low and behold, I discovered some beautiful reverse block prints by Urs Graf that caught my eye.  I found an entire grouping of Urs Graf white-line technique here  
and specifically I decided that "The Bearer of Zug", which by the way is a GREAT name, would do very nicely here .

Urs Graf was an a jack of all trades in Switzerland, having been a goldsmith, painter and a printmaker.  He was also a mercenary soldier, as is evident by his studies of the military subjects that he painted, etched and made woodcuts depicting.  He was born around 1485 and died sometime in October of 1528.  The particularly technique that he used was white-line wood cut technique.  This is the opposite of normal wood cut technique, where the majority of wood is removed to allow for white space around the figure and the hatching  is inked.  The reverse technique allows for black to surround the figure and the white is the hatching, creating an image on a black background. 

For more information on Urs Graf, I have the following links:

Art Institute of Chicago
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (contains early work)
The Met
The Cleveland Art Museum
Harvard Art Museums

I have done several black hours, so this seemed like a different riff on a similar idea. 

So I started with some experiments on black paper to get the right color match.  Permanent white did not have the right look,  nor did gold goauche or mosaic gold.  

The test swatches are below.

I also tried Yellow Ochre mixed with permanent white which seemed to blend and give me the right look.  I was not looking to replicate a black hour illumination or scroll, but an artistic rendering which made the art look like a white line block print.

Next step was sketching out the figure, the placement of the words and the silver rapier.  Many people don't include the messy bits, but I think it is important to include those to show people that the process can be messy and it is an important step.

Next step:  Write the words.  I used Alys' Mad Libs for Scribes and away I went.  The calligraphy was going to be more of an issue, so I mixed enough paint up (yellow ochre and permanent white) with extra water to get the right flow for the "ink" and then painted the paint on my dip pen and start practicing.   As you can see I practiced in white, mosaic gold and the yellow ochre paint.

Now the process pictures.  I sketched everything out lightly in pencil.  First the words, then the banner, then I started the figure.  The difficult part with black paper is that it soaks up the paint quite a bit, so all of these marks/lines/hatching needed to be painted at least twice and sometimes three times, as it would fade instantly with just one coat. 

Final piece, with crown signatures and medallion given for the award to Magdalena.


Reflection:  I was inordinately proud of this work.  I think that this is one of my better pieces by far.  I still need to improve my calligraphy but I am much more confident in it than I have been in the past.  I think I might also balance out the legs a little more, giving the right sided leg  more detail.