Burdened Tyger scroll for Robin McClaren

By His Lordship François Thibault, mid-June to 8 Oct. 2001. My sixteenth scroll.

Text

Our Kingdom has known many excellent festivities, and long have We known that they depend upon the efforts of many. No one could hope to record all who contributed to the success of Our Twelfth Night celebration, held in Nordenhalle this past XIIIth day of January. Yet do We think it meet to recognize certain of Our Subjects whose work was especially noteworthy. Thus do We, Andreas and Isabella, Rex Reginaque Orientales, award the Order of the Burdened Tyger to Lady Robin McClaren, for her efforts as Royal liason and in organizing volunteers to, inter alia, serve and clean up the feast. Done by Our Hands, this third day of February, Anno Societatis XXXV, at Carolingia Celebrates the Arts, in Our Barony of Carolingia.

Construction notes

Calligraphy

Hand
Taken from the Isabella Breviary (British Library, Additional MS 18851; I used the Backhouse reproduction, ISBN 0-7123-0269-7, which I will refer to as BIB).
Ink
Winsor & Newton Black India Ink
Nibs
Main text: 3/4 mm Brause. Capital: 3 mm Brause.
Spacing
4 mm minim height, 8 mm spacing between baselines. Capital is 3.2 cm square.

Illumination

Sources
The layout is taken from the Isabella Breviary, ff. 184v-185 (reproduced on p. 35 of BIB). I had to play with the proportions a little to get it to work on the paper I had, with the text I was writing; the only major difference this made is that I had to cut back on the gold on the right-hand page (the original had a gold-and-flowers border going around the left, bottom, and right sides of the text, not just in the gutter between the columns).
The gold in the borders is gold leaf. (It looks better in person; gold leaf doesn't scan well, since it's so shiny.) Unfortunately, after I spent a couple of weeks burnishing it (and laying down several layers), my lady wife took another look at the original and pointed out that it was blotchier than mine. Well, but that's probably just age, or the reproduction; gold is hard to photocopy. Right? Looking more closely at the text in Backhouse's reproduction, I saw that it didn't actually say "gold leaf"; it just said "gold". So I sent email to the British Library and asked if it was gold leaf or shell gold, and they said shell gold. Arrgh. (They say there are some pages in the Isabella Breviary with gold leaf borders, and I did go into this wanting to do some extensive gold leaf; but still. :-)
The scene on the left-hand page is a combination of the Marriage at Cana scene from the Saluces Hours, (Add. MS 27697, f. 49, reproduced on p. 55 of Backhouse, Books of Hours, ISBN 0-7123-0052-X) and the Last Supper scene from the Isabella Breviary (f. 100, on p. 20 of BIB). The Saluces Hours provided the table, the people (except that I wound up adding a couple more around the table), and the tile floor (more or less); the Isabella Breviary provided the architecture (archways, fireplace, windows).
Paints
(All are Winsor & Newton Designer's Gouache unless otherwise noted.)
Red: Primary Red. Lightened with Permanent White; highlighted with Alazarin Crimson.
Blue: Sky Blue. Lightened with Permanent White; shaded with Caran d'Ache Cobalt.
Dark green: Viridian. I don't much like this paint, actually; it's very grainy, and it's hard to keep it from coming out blotchy.
Light green tiles: about 4:5:1 of Viridian, Permanent White, and Primary Yellow.
Lighter green walls: about 4:6:1 of Viridian, Permanent White, and Primary Yellow.
White: Permanent White
Yellow: Primary Yellow.
Brown: varies.
Black: Caran d'Ache Black
Grey hair: 2:1 Permanent White and Caran d'Ache Black.
Grey metal, stone: 3:1 Permanent White and Caran d'Ache Black.

Misc

Paper
Aquarelle Arches Hot Press, 12" by 16".
Margins
Roughly 1" on each side; gutter is 1". "Roughly" because the paper is actually a little larger than 12" by 16". The overall size of the actual content is 10"x14".

Mistakes

No particularly large ones, but still. See the little red flower nestled in next to the big blue flower in the lower left-hand corner? There's no flower like that in the original; it's there to fill a blank space I missed when I put down the gold.

Next time I do something like this, I'm going to pick the colors for the large background fields (tiles, walls, tablecloth) before I do the figures. Some of the people's clothing doesn't distinguish well from the backgrounds; for example, the servant pouring wine out of a barrel is in blue, which blurs too much against the blue tiles.

I misspelled "liaison" (left out the second "i"). I have fixed this on the scroll; I just haven't rescanned it yet.

This is the first scroll I've done where I didn't ink in all the lines on the drawing before painting it in (a bit of a crutch, that was). However, I think I took it too far. For example, I definitely should've inked in the edges on the Burdened Tyger, instead of doing them in black paint; they came out far too fuzzy.