The finished scroll is fun to present and show off, it can be flashy and admired, but it doesn’t really exemplify all of the work that is put in to the creation. It also doesn’t show the “ugly” phases. Most beginning scribes get part way through a scroll and begin to think, “This will NEVER be lovely or look anything like the exemplar!” and want to give up. But we do have quite a few unfinished exemplars that show us just how “ugly” an illumination is before it becomes the final text.
I’d like to show some of those as well as a few of mine. Scribes, I feel, don’t often pull back the curtain to reveal their work in progress. I want it to be an encouragement to others, that a scroll HAS TO BE “UGLY” before it is done. It is how the illumination grows, layer by layer.
The glory of these pages is that they show us not only the ugly bits, but also “How They Were Done”. Images were sketched out, gold was applied, base colors, then details, then highlights. These are so very helpful in figuring out any exemplar that one wishes to use!
I do confess that showing progression is a bit intimidating as your work is laid bare for perusal. But if it helps even one person to say, “Pfft, I can do that!” or “Hmm, that doesn’t look so hard!”, then it is totally worth being under the microscope!
Philomene’s Scriptorium 