How I made an an illuminated letter "A" in a 15th century German acanthus leaf style
This is the beginning of a second on-going, long-term project I have embarked upon. You know, because one such project just isn't enough. This one will be even more laborious than my "Hands Book," and likely take a lot longer to complete. After all, 26 letters is a lot, especially when each one will be in a different style, using different techniques. My original intentional was to take you through the history of illumination styles, but there are really too many to be comprehensive and, quite frankly, some of them I don't particularly like. So, instead, I'm picking and choosing, not going in any geographical or temporal order. It's my project and I can do whatever I want with it. lol
My other original intention was to put them all into a single book. I even went so far as to make the book. The binding project came out well, so now I'll have to think of something else to do with it--and all that good watercolor paper in it.
A few more notes about this project before I get to the first illuminated letter in the series. Usually, when I make letters, I don't copy them directly from historical sources. Usually, I only imitate the style. Here, I will often be copying more directly, but not entirely. I will need to change a few things so that the letters fit in the 8x8 inch paper standard I will be using across the entire project. I may make a pastiche here and there as well.
But enough chatter. Here is the first letter!
Now, in my subtitle for this post, I described this illuminated letter as 15th century and German, but I'm going to have to admit something to you. That style attribution is only an educated guess. I have an unfortunate tendency to neglect to note where I got my historical examples from, which if you saw the size of the archive I have amassed you would understand why. This makes it hard to go back and find the accompanying provenance information from whatever library or archive the original is housed in. I may yet find it for this one (I think I made have gotten it from the collection of the Victoria & Albert but have yet to find it again), in which case I will amend this post. But, based on other letters I have and my own increasingly educated eye, my guess is this is from 1400s Germany.
So, what was my process to make my version of the letter? (You can scroll down to just go to the little video)
Draw the letter
Ink the letter
Scan the letter and print it out
Transfer it to the final paper (I cover the back of the printed paper with graphite and then trace, pressing hard)
Ink the areas where I will add gilding size and mark the areas where the size will go
Add the size. In this case, I have chosen to flat gild with Ormoline size
Add the gold. I have used 24k gold leaf here
Brush away the excess and then repeat as needed. I think I ended up using three layers of gold leaf
Paint on the base layers of gouache. In general, my base is a mid-tone of whatever I color I will be using. And this is also where I panic and think, "this is hideous."
Begin the details in the diapering. That's the checkerboard pattern.
Add the details and shading in the acanthus leaves, color by color
Finish with blue acanthus leaves and all the little last details.
Here's a time-lapse
And voila, first letter done in the my Illuminated Alphabet Project.