New experiments

I have been rather wildly experimenting with all manner of things. I am developing ideas for an illustrated children's story:

The first of the above is in acrylics on cardboard; the second in watercolor. I am more inclined toward watercolor. Other attempts with acrylics did not work out quite satisfactorily. Illustration is really a new thing for me, and it's a quite different skill set from "fine art" (i.e. stuff intended to be hung on a wall). Thus a little journey that is both fun and frustrating at the same time.

Two more in the #100heads Instagram challenge. Due to lack of time, these heads are going to have to be pretty sketchy:

Studies of cattle, as preparatory work for the illustrations - the story will feature a cow:

And in between the cattle, some studies after Hergé's Tintin books. No time studying Hergé's work is ever wasted!

My latest sideline, Chinese brush painting:

I can't get hold of real Chinese brushes around here, so I just used a pointy western one. But this is yet another steep learning curve. The style is not nearly as easy as it may look!

Halloween pumpkin and cat

Coloring picture; feel free to print a copy!

Lily

Another coloring picture; feel free to print out a copy:

Vase of Sunflowers

Coloring picture; feel free to print out a copy. And perhaps color it in the style of Van Gogh?

Free coloring picture!

One of my weird hobbies: coloring pictures for kids. Feel free to print out, give to your kid and enjoy five minutes of peace and quiet!

A Medieval project (4)

In the previous part of this project, I worked on the page layout of my fake parchment. For the next part, the instructor wanted students to experiment with various aspects of writing, in preparation for writing the manuscript. In particular, three aspects of writing will be investigated, namely ductus, angle and weight.

1. With ductus is meant the number and direction of pen strokes, as well as the order in which they are made.There are four basic strokes that make up letters: vertical, horizontal, diagonal and curved. With modern ballpoint pens, we tend to forget about ductus, because with these pens, it often does not matter that much - they give a line of uniform appearance, irrespective of how the pen is pulled or pushed on the writing surface.

Individuals will nevertheless develop their own way of doing it. I seem to remember being taught this in primary school as well, though I can't be too sure, as my older brother taught me to read and write before I went to school, and so I never paid much attention in those classes! Nowadays, at least here in South Africa, many schools seem not to put much emphasis anymore on how a pen should be held and how the pen strokes should be made.

As noted above, with ballpoint pens it does not matter as much as with older writing implements such as fountain pens or dip pens, as we shall shortly see.

In the illustration below I indicate the ductus of some letters made with two different implements. The top line shows the basic strokes. In the second line, I indicate the direction and order in which strokes were made. This applies to my own handwriting, and will not be universal with all people.

In the third line I continued the analysis, this time comparing a ballpoint pen with a dip pen. With the ballpoint letters, one hardly needs to indicate ductus, because with a ballpoint the letters can really be formed with a single, continuous stroke. With a dip pen, on the other hand, you rapidly run into trouble if you try to use it in the same way as a ballpoint, because the dip pen nib cannot readily be pushed forward; all strokes must be made with a pulling motion. With the letters in ballpoint, I could use a single motion and just change direction, without having to lift the pen, whereas with the dip pen I had to make separate pen strokes, as indicated.

2. The writing angle refers to the angle at which a pen's nib is held with respect to the horizontal or vertical. As with ductus, in the case of a ballpoint pen it makes no difference, and indeed, because of the symmetrical shape of the ballpoint nib the term doesn't even make much sense when talking about writing done in ballpoint.

With dip pens of the sort used during the Middle Ages, it makes quite a difference, as can be seen in the diagram below. Changing the angle at which the nib is held creates quite different letter shapes. This is particularly noticeable when using  broad nib. With thinner nibs the difference is not so apparent.

3. With weight is meant the difference in width between the thinnest and thickest strokes in a script. Scripts where there is no difference or the difference is small is referred to as light scripts, whereas script where the difference is big are considered to be heavy scripts. As can be seen in the diagram, the type of pen used makes a big difference. Ballpoint pens give an even and very light script. In cursive writing with a ballpoint, a slight heaviness can enter if, for example, less pressure is used on upstrokes than downstrokes (as is taught in some schools), so that downstrokes will be slightly broader. However, it hardly noticeable.

With dip pens with flat nibs, the writing is heavier the broader the nib, as can be clearly seen below, despite the fact that I have no experience in writing with these pens and am therefore not exactly skilled at it.

Only one thing remains before I can start to write my manuscript, and that is to choose a text to copy. I decided on Tennyson's poem The Lady of Shalott, which has a medieval theme even though it doesn't date from medieval times. I am going to attempt to copy out and illuminate the entire poem. This will be a project for another post.

Previous posts in this series:

Part 1: Making the parchment

Part 2: Creating quires

Part 3: Preparing the parchment for writing

Part 5: Copying and decoration

Part 6: Binding

How to make medieval-style ink

A commonly used ink in the Middle Ages was iron gall ink; there is an article about it on Wikipedia. The problem is that it uses some ingredients that are not readily available everywhere. For example, here where I live in South Africa, I have no idea where to get hold of oak galls, or iron sulfate for that matter.

So here is recipe that works reasonably well, using some commonly available materials. You will need vinegar, steel wool and tea, plus some suitable containers in which to mix them.

First, take some steel wool, put it into a container and cover it in vinegar. Leave it to react for a week:

Some of the steel wool dissolves in the vinegar, forming iron acetate (I think; my chemistry is as rusty as the gunk that forms in the glass). You will notice that quite a lot of bubbles will form on the surface of the steel wool as the reaction runs, and a rusty mess begins to float on top and sticks to the sides of the glass, which is why it is best to use an old one that you do not want to drink from again. However, lower down the solution is quite clear, and it is this bit that we'll use.

I now brewed up a very strong tea. I used two tea bags for half a mug of water and let it steep for quite a while to get it as strong as possible.One can use such a strong tea as an ink substitute as well, but it tends to be rather on the light side. Based on what I read the early pioneers in South Africa used the leaves of the protea tree instead of tea, and I have a feeling eucalyptus leaves will work as well, or any other leaf that contains a lot of tannins, but I have not tested this personally. I mix the tea with some of the clear steel wool/vinegar solution in a more or less 50:50 mixture:

One has to experiment with different mixtures, because the colour of the ink depends on that, but also on how strong the tea was, and the precise consistency of the steel wool/vinegar mixture, so no two batches ever look precisely alike.

Mostly, one gets a brownish ink, though I have on occasion managed to produce a fairly dark, bluish-black ink as well. One can use various instruments with which to write:

The ink is initially quite light in colour, but it darkens a bit as it dries, rendering the writing quite legible. Note though that as with real medieval ink, it is not archival: the acidity tends to eat into the writing surface, and will in time damage or entirely destroy it.

Aubrey Beardsley

A portrait of Beardsley, in the style of Beardsley. Well, sort of...

India ink on printer paper, about 20 cm in height.