Callig AND illumination, hurrah!

Very pleased with myself, bordering on smug, even...

Original is at University of Glasgow, Hunter 409 - 15th c. copy of Romaunt de la Rose (sadly not very hi-res, you just have to enjoy the low-res version). I had to flip through what felt like half the MS to find a capital L.

Obviously I chose it for its lovely batarde hand, and because the artwork is on the light and delicate side, rather than the rich and opulent one. However, even with this very cautious choice, I think I haven't embarrassed myself.

After the scroll is given I'll post a pic of the whole scroll.
Weird diagonal shadowy line halfway down is the exemplar page stuck behind it - didn't think to remove it before taking a picture, d'oh.

Pride before a fall...

 I don't really believe that anyone is karmically 'punished' for being cheeky or smug, but this evening may prove me wrong.

I was (and still am!) pleased with my last C&I, so I sat down to do some more painting tonight.

Collecting my supplies, I found that somewhere along the line, I've misplaced both my burnishing stone and my scraper (carving tool that Trinite gave me) for 'erasing' callig mistakes, and had to turn over all my scribing supplies to find substitutes (Xacto knife, and a small dust-catching jasper carving are pinch-hitting this evening).
 
Then I carefully poured my bottle of ink (which I'd decanted into a tiny 'sampler' jam jar because the original bottle cap broke)  down the drain, mistaking it for washing water - 'gosh, that's really thick and black.. oh, bugger...'

Then in my enthusiasm for trying out the light and delicate stylised flowers, I managed to botch PCS blanks in rapid succession by not planning the decoration ahead of time.

Sigh.

One good thing I've learned about scribing is that it's worth doing multiple pieces at once.

It takes only a little more time to lay out 3 scrolls than it does one. After you sketch out the first capital letter, the next 2, 3, 4 or however many go much faster. 

This evening, after I'd resigned myself to having a selection of practice scrolls to perfect my whitework on, the filling in of letters went almost as fast on 3 as for painting a single capital.

It even applies to calligraphy, though I find it hard to sit at scribing for more than a couple of hours at a time - it takes real drive to scribe two scrolls.

It's almost the polar opposite of how I did scribing to start with: it took all my energy to sit down to a single scroll, and I'd 'use up' my available scribing energy doing preparation and layout and practice, and then lose heart, patience and time just when the fun part was starting. And I'd feel so tired after doing one scroll it would take ages to start the run up to the next one.

So it's annoying to sacrifice 3 scrolls to Titivillus in one evening; but it doesn't feel like the disaster it might have been a few years ago.