For this scroll I challenged myself to do the drafting by hand and to specifically include curves in the design. I knew I wanted something with roses and found an image online that I thought I could handle and looked period enough for my purposes. I have since learned that the source artwork was done by Feral Canary. From their posts, I can tell that this person is in the SCA but there are no source references for their work and I haven’t been able to find any period pieces that look like it thus far. So, I must assume this piece was an original and I accidentally copied it too closely for what I would consider fair artistic license use.

Being ignorant at the time, I sat down with traditional drafting tools at the coffee table and got to work.

Once I’d sketched it all out, I took it to the light table. After a dozen scrolls at medium tilt, I decided it was time to change it to high tilt for the micron pen. It turned out to be much easier on my back. It still aches if I stand at the table too long, but it did notably extend the length of time I can work. The calligraphy was done on a flat though surface because I wasn’t ready to try high tilt dip pen yet.

The illuminated letter is one part reference from my Illuminated Letters Sketchbook and one part integration with the scroll art. The curves of the vines at the bottom left did not turn out as nicely flowing as the other curves, so that’s a thing to work on for next time. Also, I completely forgot to do the white work on the vines and roses.

While there were a number of problematic issues with this scroll, I did learn from it and that is a large part of why I’m documenting my progress. So, there’s that.

Materials: 8″x10″ pergamenata, ruler, Ames lettering guide, drafting curves, pencil, eraser, 01 micron pen, metal scraper, Finetec gold paint, Winsor & Newton gouache, Princeton heritage 2/0 round paint brush, Speedball Super Black ink, dip pen