March 15, 2010: BHAS Last Class

Beverly Hills Adult School Class #7: This is the final class of the semester and we had a potluck. DeAnn reviewed everyone's final projects, in whatever state they were in. Then she helped individual students with specific issues.

DeAnn's tip: Date every piece you create on the back. Other information you may want to include: nib size, type of ink/medium, purpose or reason for project.

Some useful tips from students for working on the illuminated manuscript project:

1. Once you've finalized your decorate capital and surrounding decorative elements, copy it to experiment with different color combinations and/or practice various background patterning techniques.
2. Once you've written out your text, copy it and cut it out into lines. As you write the final version on the pergamenata, remove each line from the paste-up as you go so you won't accidentally re-write a line you've already written. Another related tip: use a post-it to mark which line you're on.
3. Copy the project template or your own lined paper onto your own paper for practicing.

Next semester DeAnn will be teaching copperplate. Spring semester starts 4/5/10.

Beverly Hills Adult School Gothic Class #6

Beverly Hills Adult School Class #6: DeAnn reviewed students’ in-progress Illuminated Manuscript projects and gave advice on common problems.

Bare patches of gold: Placing a piece of glassine on top of the gilded letter will make it easier to see the bare spots in the gold layer. If there are such spots in your illuminated letter where the gold didn’t adhere to the gesso (glue mixture), rehydrate the glue by breathing on it (reminder: remove any lipstick/chapstick first). Then rub more gold on the bare areas. You may need to do this a few more times to cover all the spots. Then re-burnish the whole letter & scrape any excess off to have clean edges.Bumpy gold: If the glue layer wasn’t completely smooth, the gold may look bumpy, uneven or seem to have ridges in it. To minimize this look, add an embossed pattern into the gold with a bead burnisher. Place some padding beneath the sheet, then “draw” a pattern in the gold (for example, curves or a zig-zagging line, dots, etc.). If you’re afraid of working directly on the gold, place a piece of glassine on top and emboss a pattern through that.

Solidly painted decorative elements: if you didn’t paint leaves or flowers half with the full color and half with its tint, decorate the solid areas with patterns painted in permanent white gouache. Add just enough water to hydrate the paint. Then using a 00 pointed brush, paint dots or cross-hatching or diagonal lines to pattern or “diaper” the elements. This can also be done on a solid background of the decorative capital. See example from last week.

Paint the background of the decorative capitals: If you’re also gilding decorative capitals within your text, paint a background around it so that it is highlighted. Use a contrasting color to the gold like blue or red, not yellow, for example.

Next Monday, 3/15/10, will be the last Gothic class and we’re planning on having a potluck. This is an additional class to the number of classes stated in the BHAS catalog, so DeAnn will collect a voluntary class fee of $10. Even if you’re not finished with your illuminated manuscript project, bring it to class so that DeAnn can help you with any questions or issues you have. It’s an on-going process and if you sign-up for next semester’s class, you can continue working on it.



HOMEWORK: continue working on your illuminated manuscript project.

Beverly Hills Adult School Gothic Class #5

Beverly Hills Adult School Class #5:  DeAnn reviewed the steps for the Illuminated Manuscript project and demonstrated painting the decorative elements with gouache.

Text:  Gothic textura doesn’t have any white space, so don’t indent or leave white space after a line or put space between stanzas of a poem. Write out your text without any spacing. If you want to distinguish the stanzas of a poem, consider making the initial capital a decorative Lombardic, which can be illuminated if desired. Otherwise paint it in.

More important than what the text says is how it looks. Don’t be too concerned with misspellings or accidentally dropped words or other grammatical errors. As long as the letters are spaced correctly like a picket fence, the text block will look good.

The text should be flush left, but it doesn’t have to be completely right justified; it can look a little ragged, but don’t use hyphens. If you do decide to break apart a word at the end of a line, don’t use a hyphen, just continue the word on the next line.

From some of the illuminated manuscript books, DeAnn pointed out examples of decorative fillers that would take up the end of a line. Too many in a row begin to look repetitive. But if you need to fill up a line as a last resort, you can use a space filler. Draw a bar and paint it with the colors you’re using in the project. Decorate it with gold lines.

You can also use decorative aspects in various places on the page to fill space. For example, if you have a floral decoration on the left side with vines, you can repeat a flower or vines in other strategic places where there seems to be too much white space.

Alternate letterforms: to break up the look, consider using these alternate forms of some letters.

n, h, m, k: instead of a square stroke to end, pull the downstroke below the base-line.

n, m: pull the rectangle stroke slightly longer into a wedge shape, then pull it down into the downstroke (for the “m”, the second half only).

a:  if you can’t stand the “a” from the exemplar, try this simplified version.

s: here are some alternate forms of "s":

DeAnn demonstrated painting the decorative elements of the illuminated manuscript project.

1. Set up your workspace: have 2 water containers, one for dirty, one for clean. Always rinse brush in the dirty container first, then rinse in the clean container
2. Choose 3 colors (one of the greens) and zinc white. Gouache, an opaque watercolor, is used for the paint. Place a dab of each color on the palette; even if it dries, you can reconstitute it with water.
3. For the colors, put zinc white next to each color. Add the tiniest bit of color, then a drop of water, to mix a tint.
4. Paint each leaf half of one color, then half in that color’s tint. Make sure the first color is dry before painting on the other half.  Paint right over the pencil outline.
5. Once all the leaves are painted & dry, “diaper” them with permanent white gouache.  With a small pointed brush (e.g. size 0/0), decorate each leaf with lines, cross-hatching, or dots.
6. Since illuminated manuscripts rarely ever had plain surfaces, you can also “diaper” the background. Using the 2H lead, draw diagonal lines with the C-thru ruler, 1/8-inch apart, to create a cross-hatch pattern. If desired, draw dots or a trio of dots in each space with permanent white.
7. Clean up the edges with an X-acto knife with the #16 blade. (TIP:  Every calligrapher should have the #11 blade and #16 blade.)  If you need to clean any blobs of paint, you can scrape them off too.
8. Outline each leaf in black with a Pigma Micron 005 pen.
9. If you have leftover paint in the palette, let it dry. Don’t cover it while it’s wet, it may mold. Once it’s dry, cover with wax paper to keep out dust. You can reconstitute it with water.

REMEMBER: with illumination, you can never be too garish!

HOMEWORK:  Continue working on your illuminated manuscript project. 2 more weeks left in class. DeAnn will help you with painting and any other issues you encounter.