Quinque nuntius: Capitulum Duo

Salvete!

A day later than usual!  It has been rather busy lately, yet here we are again.  We are back to the Gospel project this time.  Not much writing this time, however I decided to go back and try my hand at using Gesso to create a 3d illumination.  I've done this only once before with the St Jude prayer and it was reasonably successful.  I ran a few tests on spare sheets to get back into it before going for it.  However I didn't anticipate just how much it would soak through.  Whenever I do any work I always place a sheet of card behind the page I am working on.  The idea is that if there is any bleed through it will be caught by the card and not affect the additional pages of the book.  Sadly the Gesso soaked through that card and went onto the page behind.  It seems to have dried okay I'll only find out how badly it has been effected once I write on it. 

Okay that's the doom and gloom out the way! The gesso came out fantastic!  I was happy with the shaping and design, however I think next time I might make it slightly larger next time.  Things seem a little cramped but it works well.  I suspect the size will depend on the letter I am illuminating.  Gesso takes 24 hours to fully dry before you can do anything with it, you then have to breathe on it to make it "sticky" before applying the gold.  So 24 hours later and lots of breathing and a very light headed self I managed to get the following result.


Sadly lacking the sandpaper ot skill to scrape away the bumps from the gesso to get that mirror look.  However I'm left with thinking "why didn't I do this sooner?" (Then I remembered that it took three days the last time for one letter).  The effect speaks for itself I think.

I need to work on the lines to make them tidier but that will come with practice and time. In total I applied 3 layers of gold onto the illumination to get the best effect.

After lightly burnishing to get a better shine I applied the paint, going for a two toned look of red and blue.  I was aiming for bold.

I think it worked well.  I might keep the same colour scheme throughout, maybe reversing the red and blue now and then.

On to the writing.  I said I was done with the doom and gloom, I kind of lied.  I had to change nibs half way through writing.  This nib and I have had a love hate relationship recently, I had no choice to use it as it was my smallest nib (turned out not true).  But I discovered that it was scratching the paper and causing a bleed through effect to the other side.  So I had no choice to change, which is a total nightmare.  The new nib took some getting used too, as it's longer (almost twice as long) as the original.  I also have to hold it further back, so things were a little weird at first.  I know it doesn't look like much but that extra length really threw me for a while.

However that being said, chapter 2 is coming along nicely, here is the final result:

 Valete!